Bitcoin's mining difficulty has now remained below its all-time high for longer than at any point in the asset's history, according to on-chain data. The metric reached a record of almost 156 trillion on October 29, 2025, but stood at just over 148 trillion as of press time—about 5% below that peak—and has not broken it since.
The current period without a new difficulty record has exceeded the previous longest stretch, which lasted roughly 364 days between August 2011 and July 2012. During that earlier period, Bitcoin's price collapsed by roughly 94%–95%. Another exceptionally long difficulty downturn occurred in 2021 following China's sweeping ban on domestic crypto mining, which forced a substantial portion of global hash rate to relocate.
Structural pressures on mining economics
Saifedean Ammous, author of The Bitcoin Standard, noted that the current slowdown has occurred without anything remotely comparable to those earlier shocks. In a mining update he reshared, he described the current period as the longest in Bitcoin's history and attributed it in part to the network's pre-programmed halvings.
Because the block subsidy drops by 50% roughly every four years, Bitcoin's price must increase fast enough to compensate miners for the reduction. Ammous estimated that mining economics require the cryptocurrency's value to appreciate by almost 19% annually over four years, before accounting for dollar devaluation and the growing opportunity cost created by AI infrastructure. If expected returns fall below that threshold, allocating more capital and electricity toward mining becomes progressively less attractive.
Competition from AI data centers
Ammous argued that Bitcoin miners no longer hold the same monopoly over cheap power and data-center infrastructure they once enjoyed. AI companies are competing aggressively for those resources and may offer miners a more profitable use for their facilities.
Core Scientific is a prominent example. 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% quarter-over-quarter to $215.4 million in the third quarter, up from $15 million a year earlier.
Potential implications for Bitcoin
Ammous does not view the shift as necessarily bearish for BTC. 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.
