Bitcoin difficulty falls 9.13% in deepest cut since June

Bitcoin lowered its mining difficulty by 9.13% at block 975,744 on November 14, delivering its largest downward adjustment since June and increasing the expected bitcoin output of each unit of active computing power.

Newhedge’s node-derived adjustment table records the difficulty falling from 148,364,561,003,867 to 134,823,837,323,272. ChainQuery, which says it obtains the figures from its own Bitcoin Core node, places the start of the new epoch at 05:02:50 UTC on November 14.

The event is a completed protocol adjustment, not a forecast. It followed two consecutive increases: 5.92% at block 971,712 on October 16 and 5.54% at block 973,728 on October 29, according to Newhedge’s table.

Slower blocks triggered the reset

Bitcoin recalculates its proof-of-work target after each 2,016-block epoch. The Bitcoin Core implementation uses a target interval of approximately 14 days, with the protocol increasing difficulty when the preceding blocks arrive too quickly and reducing it when they arrive too slowly.

Firsthand Bitcoin calculated that the epoch ending November 14 took approximately 15 days and 10 hours, producing an average interval of about 11 minutes per block. Both figures cover that completed 2,016-block window. They are not measures of how quickly any individual block must arrive, because proof-of-work block discovery is probabilistic.

Difficulty is also an indirect signal rather than a census of mining machines. A slower epoch is consistent with less effective computing power competing for blocks, but block-time variance, pool performance and equipment uptime prevent the retarget from identifying exactly how many machines disconnected or why.

The 9.13% reduction was the deepest since the 10.09% cut on June 14. Firsthand’s full adjustment record classifies it as the fifth reduction of at least 5% during 2026, following cuts in February, March, June and July. That historical count covers completed retargets through November 14; it does not predict the remaining adjustments this year.

Fixed hashrate can expect about 10% more bitcoin

For a miner holding its hashrate and uptime constant, expected bitcoin output moves inversely with difficulty. Dividing the old difficulty by the new level implies an expected-output increase of approximately 10.04% for the same computing power during the new epoch.

That is a Coinburn calculation based on Newhedge’s unrounded difficulty values. It describes expected gross bitcoin production before pool fees and assumes unchanged hashrate, uptime, block subsidies, transaction-fee conditions and pool performance. Actual payouts remain variable because individual blocks are found randomly and network hashrate can change throughout the epoch.

The calculation also says nothing by itself about dollar revenue or profit. Bitcoin’s market price, electricity costs, machine efficiency, cooling, financing and operating expenses remain separate variables. A miner can receive more bitcoin per unit of computing power after a difficulty cut while still earning less in dollars or operating at a loss.

The adjustment can reverse

Lower difficulty is the protocol’s automatic response to a slower block-production window. It reduces the work required for the network’s next blocks and can make previously marginal equipment more competitive, but it does not guarantee that machines will return.

Recent history illustrates that limitation. Newhedge records an 11.16% reduction on February 7 followed by a 14.73% increase on February 19. The June 14 reduction was followed by a 7.15% increase on June 27. Those completed epochs show how quickly changing hashrate can reverse part or all of a cut.

The defensible conclusion is therefore narrow: Bitcoin’s difficulty fell 9.13% at the November 14 boundary, and fixed computing power now has approximately 10% greater expected bitcoin output than under the preceding target. The next retarget will depend on block production across the new 2,016-block window, so early estimates are too unstable to treat as an outcome.