Severe miner stress from lower prices and reduced transaction fees is forcing unprofitable operations offline, as evidenced by the steepest mining difficulty decline since China's 2021 mining ban.

"Daily revenue across the mining network fell 46% from a year earlier. Mining difficulty also dropped 18.3% from its November 2025 peak as operators switched off machines that could no longer run profitably. VanEck called the difficulty decline the steepest since China prohibited domestic Bitcoin mining in 2021."