Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Climbs 5.54% to 148.36 Trillion

Updated October 31, 2026. Bitcoin mining difficulty climbed 5.54% to 148.36 trillion on October 29, increasing the amount of computational work miners are expected to perform to find a valid block. The adjustment occurred at block 973,728 at 19:14:58 UTC, according to Bitcoin block data. Difficulty had already increased 5.92% on October 16, making this the second substantial upward adjustment in succession.

The change matters to anyone operating Bitcoin mining machines: at unchanged computing power, block rewards, transaction fees and bitcoin prices, higher difficulty reduces the expected bitcoin earned per unit of hashrate. But difficulty is not electricity consumption, a measured count of active miners or a forecast of the Bitcoin price. Understanding those distinctions is essential for evaluating the latest figures.

What Changed at Bitcoin Block 973,728?

The block record for height 973,728 shows a difficulty of approximately 148,364,561,003,867, commonly rounded to 148.36T. The Mempool mining dashboard records the preceding difficulty as 140.58T, following the October 16 adjustment at block 971,712. In this context, T means one trillion, or one million million, and difficulty is a dimensionless ratio rather than a hashrate expressed in hashes per second.

Difficulty is now roughly 11.8% above its early-October level. It is nevertheless not a new all-time high: Hashrate Index places the October 29 reading about 4.9% below the previous record of approximately 155.97T reached on October 29, 2025. Calling the latest increase a new record would misrepresent the historical comparison.

Why Does Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Adjust Every 2,016 Blocks?

Bitcoin miners repeatedly calculate hashes in search of a block header that meets the network’s proof-of-work target. The network changes that target every 2,016 blocks, aiming for an average interval of approximately ten minutes per block. If the prior period produced blocks faster than intended, the target becomes harder to meet; if blocks took longer, it becomes easier.

This is an automatic consensus rule, not a decision by a mining company or government. The Bitcoin Core proof-of-work implementation applies the adjustment using timestamps from the previous difficulty period, subject to protocol limits. An individual miner cannot vote the difficulty up or down by changing a setting in an ASIC control panel.

The adjustment responds to previous block-production speed. Consequently, it is a delayed reflection of competition on the network, not a live census of operating machines. Short-term block times can also fluctuate because mining is probabilistic.

Is Bitcoin’s Hashrate Back Above One Zettahash per Second?

Hashrate Index’s October 30 analysis reports that its seven-day moving average of estimated hashrate passed 1,000 exahashes per second (EH/s), or one zettahash per second (ZH/s), on October 11 and remained above that threshold. It also notes that the October 16 and October 29 adjustments followed a period of weaker difficulty during much of 2026.

Hashrate and difficulty are related but not interchangeable. Hashrate is an estimate of how many cryptographic calculations the network is performing per second; difficulty measures how hard an acceptable block hash is to find. Different observation windows can produce different hashrate estimates. They are typically inferred from block production rather than measured from a universal registry of every running ASIC.

Hashrate Index examines seasonal electricity-demand management in Texas as one possible part of the broader rebound, including mining curtailments during peak power periods. That analysis does not identify every machine that came online or prove that any single country’s energy conditions caused the October 29 adjustment. It also does not imply that every miner became more profitable.

How Much Does a 5.54% Difficulty Increase Reduce Mining Revenue?

For a miner operating at a fixed hashrate, expected bitcoin production from proof-of-work is inversely related to network difficulty. The new-to-old difficulty ratio is approximately 1.0554. Its reciprocal means expected bitcoin generated per hash falls by about 5.25%, assuming the same block subsidy and ignoring changes in transaction fees. This is a mathematical comparison, not a measured revenue decline for every mining business.

Bitcoin’s current block subsidy is 3.125 BTC, with transaction fees added to each successful block. A real miner’s income also depends on Bitcoin’s market price, the fee environment, pool payout method, pool charges, uptime and luck. A mining pool can smooth payments, but it does not eliminate the economic effect of changing difficulty. A higher Bitcoin price or greater transaction fees could offset some or all of the difficulty-related pressure in U.S. dollar terms.

Miners often track hashprice, usually quoted as the expected gross revenue per petahash per second per day (USD/PH/s/day). The Hashrate Index difficulty and hashprice explanation describes why the two measures generally move in opposite directions when other inputs are unchanged. Hashprice is an industry revenue benchmark, not an individual operator’s profit margin.

Does Higher Mining Difficulty Make ASICs Use More Electricity?

Not automatically. Difficulty is a network parameter; it does not remotely change a machine’s power supply or require each ASIC to draw 5.54% more watts. A miner with an unchanged clock rate, efficiency and operating schedule generally consumes approximately the same electricity even while the expected number of bitcoins earned declines.

Consider a hypothetical ASIC running at 200 terahashes per second (TH/s) with an efficiency of 20 joules per terahash (J/TH). That corresponds to about 4 kilowatts of electrical power, or 96 kilowatt-hours over 24 hours. At an illustrative electricity price of $0.07 per kilowatt-hour, the energy bill would be approximately $6.72 per day before ventilation, maintenance, networking, pool fees, taxes and hardware costs.

Those figures describe an example, not a specific model’s tested performance or a statement that the machine earns more than it costs to run. At the same electrical draw, lower expected bitcoin output makes energy cost per bitcoin produced higher. Older, less efficient hardware and miners on expensive electricity contracts are generally more exposed; actual outcomes require current device performance, local tariffs and realized mining revenue.

Does Higher Difficulty Mean Bitcoin Is More Secure or More Valuable?

Higher difficulty indicates that the network currently requires more expected proof-of-work to produce a valid block, and may accompany a recovery in active mining competition. That can be relevant when evaluating the resources needed to attack the network. However, difficulty alone does not prove that mining ownership is decentralized, that pools are independent, or that an attack is impossible. Security also depends on incentives, the distribution of hash power and operating behavior.

Difficulty also does not change Bitcoin’s fixed issuance rules. Miners compete for the same scheduled subsidy at a given block height, plus variable fees, while the retarget mechanism works toward a ten-minute average block interval. More competition redistributes expected rewards among miners; it does not create extra bitcoin for them collectively over a normal long-run period. No reliable Bitcoin price prediction follows from the difficulty figure by itself.

When Is the Next Bitcoin Difficulty Adjustment?

The next retarget is programmed for block 975,744, exactly 2,016 blocks after the October 29 change. If blocks average ten minutes, the next adjustment would fall around November 12–13, 2026. That calendar window is an estimate, not a confirmed schedule: the actual time depends on when miners find the intervening blocks.

Public dashboards may show a projected positive or negative adjustment before that height, but the percentage can change as more blocks are mined. Readers comparing forecasts should check the timestamp, underlying block height and averaging method, rather than treating an early estimate as a settled outcome. Newhedge’s historical difficulty tracker provides a way to compare prior completed adjustments with evolving projections.

The bottom line: Bitcoin difficulty rose 5.54% to 148.36 trillion on October 29, its second consecutive sizeable increase. For a miner running unchanged equipment, this translates into roughly 5.25% less expected bitcoin per unit of computing work under otherwise identical conditions—not 5.54% more electricity use. The next decisive data point is the retarget at block 975,744, while day-to-day profitability continues to depend on prices, fees, energy contracts and ASIC efficiency.