Bitcoin Mining Enters a New Reality: Even the China Ban Wasn’t This Bad
Bitcoin mining difficulty has remained below its all-time high for longer than at any point in the asset's history.
Bitcoin’s mining industry is showing unusual weakness, even as the network remains highly valuable.
The difficulty metric has stayed below its October 29, 2025 record of almost 156 trillion for more than a year. As of press time, it stands at just over 148 trillion, which is 5% below that peak.
This current period without a new difficulty record has now exceeded the previous longest stretch, which lasted roughly 364 days between August 2011 and July 2012.
Structural Challenges
Saifedean Ammous, author of The Bitcoin Standard, noted that the current slowdown has happened without anything remotely comparable to previous events.
The current period has become the longest in Bitcoin’s history.
He blamed it on Bitcoin’s pre-programmed halvings, which drop the block subsidy by 50% roughly every four years. Ammous estimated that mining economics require the cryptocurrency’s value to appreciate by almost 19% annually over four years to compensate miners.
If expected returns are below that threshold, allocating more capital and electricity toward mining becomes progressively less attractive.
Competition from AI
Ammous argued that Bitcoin miners no longer have the same monopoly over cheap power and data-center infrastructure they once enjoyed.
AI companies are competing aggressively for precisely those resources, potentially offering miners a more profitable use for their facilities.
Core Scientific is a prime example, as the company recently said it plans to fully exit the Bitcoin mining space by the end of the year and enter 2027 as a dedicated AI and high-performance computing colocation provider.
It has already reduced its mining fleet by almost half as it redirects electricity and data-center capacity toward infrastructure customers.
The financial incentive is clear: colocation revenue jumped 58% QoQ to $215.4 million in the third quarter, up from $15 million a year earlier.
Potential Long-Term Benefits
Ammous doesn’t think this is necessarily bearish for BTC. In fact, he noted that if mining becomes less attractive than simply holding BTC, capital that might have gone toward machines, facilities, and electricity could instead flow directly into Bitcoin.
He also expects declining electricity consumption to weaken one of the asset’s most persistent criticisms, and that of the network behind it.
Related
