Although the previous week offered miners a more favorable stretch, conditions have tightened considerably over the last four days. Bitcoin’s network difficulty climbed on May 15 at block height 949536, marking the first upward adjustment in more than a month, or two full epochs. The 3.12% increase lifted the difficulty rating from 132.47 trillion to the current 136.61 trillion.

It also marked the fourth difficulty increase of 2026 and the third largest adjustment recorded so far this year. Bitcoin’s mining difficulty reaching 136.61 trillion means the network is now approximately 136.61 trillion times more difficult to mine a block than it was when Satoshi Nakamoto first launched Bitcoin in 2009. Yet the difficulty adjustment is far from the only pressure weighing on bitcoin mining participants.

The strain has intensified over the last four days following the latest difficulty epoch increase, as revenue tied to hashprice continues to thin. In simple terms, hashprice represents the estimated daily value of 1 PH/s of hashing power. Data recorded by hashrateindex.com shows hashprice stood at $38.97 on May 14. Since then, as mining difficulty climbed, bitcoin miners are now earning 9.44% less, with a single petahash currently valued at roughly $35.29 per day.

This comes as bitcoin retreated from an intraday high above $82,000 on May 14 and now changes hands at $76,680 per coin as of 3 p.m. ET on Monday afternoon, May 18. Current statistics point to a potential difficulty decline at the next epoch adjustment expected on or around May 29, though with 1,576 blocks left to mine at press time, those projections could shift considerably before then.

Block intervals are moving at a slightly slower pace, contributing to the projected reduction, but only marginally, with average times hovering around 10 minutes and 12 seconds. Bitcoin transaction fees tied to onchain transfers also remain relatively insignificant, accounting for just 0.59% of the total block reward over the last 24 hours. From a revenue standpoint, mining profitability ultimately hinges on difficulty epochs and hashprice conditions, which are dependent on bitcoin’s market performance.

In terms of hashrate, the network briefly climbed above the 1,000 exahash per second (EH/s), or 1 zettahash per second (ZH/s), threshold on May 11, just days before May 14. Since then, computational power has eased lower and is currently moving along at 959.03 EH/s as of 3:30 p.m. ET on May 18. Both the revenue slide and the difficulty rise have contributed to this factor.

For miners already operating on narrow margins, the current environment leaves little room for error as efficiency and energy costs become increasingly decisive. A modest rebound in bitcoin’s price or a softer difficulty adjustment could offer temporary relief, but the sector’s immediate direction still appears tied to whether market momentum can outpace the network’s relentless computational expansion in the coming days, weeks, and months ahead.

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