The difficulty of mining Bitcoin (CRYPTO: $BTC) continues to decline as the price of the largest digital asset remains rangebound at $60,000 U.S. to $65,000 U.S.
Bitcoin miners remain in one of their longest periods of contraction at the end of July as the price of BTC fails to stage a meaningful recovery and break above resistance at $65,000 U.S.
Industry data shows that that the mining difficulty of Bitcoin fell to 19.9% in July, the third steepest decline on record.
Independent network data shows that Bitcoin’s mining difficulty is nearly 20% below its record high set in November 2025.
The decline has reduced the dollar revenue that miners earn for minting new Bitcoin to 3.125 BTC per block.
Bitcoin’s seven-day average hashrate stood near 868 exahashes per second on July 29, down from more than one zettahash per second at late 2025.
Hashrate refers to the speed and amount of computing power used by cryptocurrency networks to mint new Bitcoin.
The difficulty in mining Bitcoin has turned negative on a year-over-year basis for only the second time in the history of BTC.
The previous instance occurred when China first banned Bitcoin mining back in 2021.
Bitcoin mining is currently under pressure as many miners shutdown and power capacity shifts to artificial intelligence (A.I.) data centres and high-performance computing (HPC).
Bitcoin miners sold more than 32,000 Bitcoin during this year’s first quarter, with that total exceeding sales during all of 2025.
Leading Bitcoin miners include Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: $RIOT) and MARA Holdings (NASDAQ: $MARA).
