- JPMorgan said bitcoin mining difficulty's sensitivity to price changes has risen sharply this year.
- The bank estimated more miners are operating near breakeven as bitcoin trades below its production cost.
- Larger and more frequent difficulty adjustments are likely if bitcoin remains under its estimated $78,000 production cost.
Bitcoin's mining network is becoming increasingly sensitive to price movements as more miners operate near breakeven levels, according to Wall Street bank JPMorgan.
The bank said bitcoin's hashrate and mining difficulty have become noticeably more responsive to changes in the cryptocurrency's price this year. Over the past six months, the beta of mining difficulty relative to BTC price moves has climbed to 0.62, a sign that the network's computing power is reacting more quickly to market conditions.
"Mining economics have worsened this year with the bitcoin price staying well below its production cost for five months in a row," analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou said in the report last week.
The hashrate refers to the total combined computational power used to mine and process transactions on a proof-of-work blockchain, and is measured in exahashes per second.
The analysts said the trend suggests a larger share of miners are now operating close to their production costs, making aggregate hash rate more vulnerable to price fluctuations.
Mining economics have deteriorated in 2026, the analysts noted, with bitcoin trading below its estimated production cost for five consecutive months. Citing CoinShares' first-quarter mining report, JPMorgan said roughly 20% of miners are currently estimated to be unprofitable.
Financial pressure has prompted miners to sell more bitcoin holdings. Publicly traded mining companies liquidated more than 32,000 BTC in the first quarter, exceeding their combined sales for all of 2025, according to data cited by the report.
As a result, even relatively small price moves are increasingly affecting network activity. When bitcoin falls below production costs, higher-cost operators tend to shut down equipment, causing hashrate to decline and mining difficulty to adjust lower. The bank pointed to the second week of June, when mining difficulty dropped 10%, the second decline of that magnitude this year.
Looking ahead, the analysts expect heightened sensitivity in hashrate and mining difficulty to persist as long as bitcoin remains below its estimated production cost, which the bank currently puts at about $78,000. The world's laregst cryptocurrency was trading around $64,700 at publication time.
Bitcoin miners are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence and high-performance computing (HPC) to diversify revenue as mining margins come under pressure.
The appeal is straightforward: AI hosting contracts can provide stable, multi-year revenue streams and higher margins than the more volatile economics of bitcoin mining, which have been squeezed by rising network competition and the 2024 halving.
Analysts estimate miners have announced tens of billions of dollars in AI and HPC-related deals, though execution risks and the significant capital required to build AI-ready facilities remain key challenges.
Read more: Bitcoin miners' AI pivot faces $50 billion reality check, says VanEck
