Bitcoin mining difficulty has stayed below its all-time high for longer than at any point in the asset's history. Saifedean Ammous points partly to halving economics, while the focus has shifted to whether the downturn is temporary or capital and electricity are moving elsewhere.
Bitcoin mining difficulty has now remained below its record for longer than ever, surpassing a stretch that lasted roughly 364 days between August 2011 and July 2012. The focus has shifted to whether miners face a temporary downturn or whether capital and electricity are permanently migrating elsewhere.
Difficulty stalls 5% below its October 2025 peak
According to on-chain data, difficulty reached almost 156 trillion on October 29, 2025. As of press time, it stood at just over 148 trillion, 5% below that peak, and has not broken it since.
Back then, Bitcoin's price collapsed by roughly 94%-95%. Another long difficulty downturn in 2021 followed China's sweeping ban on domestic crypto mining, which forced a substantial portion of global hash rate to relocate.
Ammous points partly to halving economics
Saifedean Ammous, author of The Bitcoin Standard, noted that the current slowdown has happened without anything remotely comparable to those events. His explanation is structural.
In part, he blamed Bitcoin's pre-programmed halvings. The block subsidy drops by 50% roughly every four years, so BTC's price must rise fast enough to compensate miners for the reduction. He estimated that mining economics require the cryptocurrency's value to appreciate by almost 19% annually over four years, before accounting for dollar devaluation and the growing opportunity cost created by AI infrastructure.
If expected returns fall below that threshold, putting more capital and electricity into mining becomes progressively less attractive.
Source: CryptoPotato
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