Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Stayed Below Record for 374 Days

By Elena Vasquez

Bitcoin (BTC) mining difficulty remained below its 155.97 trillion (T) peak for 374 days through Saturday, Nov. 7, 2026, according to the network’s recorded difficulty history. That is the longest interval below a previous difficulty high in Bitcoin’s history.

The peak was reached Oct. 29, 2025. The 374-day period therefore covers just over 12 months, beginning with the October 2025 peak and ending on the corresponding calendar point in 2026.

This distinction matters for miners and investors. The milestone concerns a network mining metric, not Bitcoin’s market price or miner revenue. The source supplies no hash-rate total, electricity cost, mining revenue or profit data, so it does not establish that miners operated less profitably or that network capacity contracted.

What historical gaps did the 374-day period surpass?

Bitcoin’s previous longest intervals below a difficulty peak were:

• 364 days after the 2011 crash, which the new interval exceeded by 10 days.
• 253 days following China’s 2021 mining ban, a record the new interval exceeded by 121 days.

Economist Saifedean Ammous said the current stretch outlasted the 95% Bitcoin price drawdown in 2011 and the period following China’s ban. He called it “a new world for Bitcoin mining.”

Those comparisons place the duration alongside two major Bitcoin stress episodes, although the source does not show that mining difficulty moved for the same reasons in each case. A price drawdown, a mining restriction and a difficulty reading are separate measures, and the excerpt provides no model equating them. In plain terms, the latest interval lasted 10 days longer than the post-2011 record and nearly four months longer than the post-ban record.

How did mining difficulty recover from its June low?

Difficulty fell to 124.93T in mid-June 2026, about 20% below the 155.97T peak. It then climbed to 148.36T in October, recovering 23.43T from the June low, or about 18.8%. Both readings remained below the record.

Even after that rebound, the October figure was 7.61T, or roughly 4.9%, below the peak. The June trough sat 31.04T below it. The October reading recovered most of the distance from that trough toward the record, but it did not restore the October 2025 high.

The source does not identify what caused the fall and subsequent rise, and it provides no mine-level data. It therefore supports a description of the metric’s path, not a conclusion about miner margins or equipment deployment. The plain takeaway is that mining difficulty recovered substantially from June without setting another record.

What does the record actually establish?

The 374-day stretch now serves as the benchmark for measuring future periods below the 155.97T high. That framing is important because “longest below record” is not the same as “lowest difficulty,” and Bitcoin reached its 124.93T reading before the October recovery.

Ammous’s phrase “a new world for Bitcoin mining” conveys a broader interpretation, but the excerpt offers no definition for it. No forecast, operating threshold or profitability test accompanies the statement. The defensible conclusion is limited to the historical comparison: the network spent more than a year without regaining its record difficulty.

The plain conclusion is that Bitcoin set a duration record without setting a new difficulty high. The next observable checkpoint is whether mining difficulty closes the remaining 7.61T gap and reclaims 155.97T; if it does not, the record below-peak interval extends further.