Bitcoin’s network difficulty fell 11.16% over the weekend, marking the largest reduction since the July 2021 collapse after China’s mining crackdown. The adjustment makes mining easier and points to recent downward pressure on hash rate and miner profitability.
Operators across the southern United States are preparing for a major ice storm that could force temporary shutdowns to protect strained power grids, echoing miner curtailments during the 2022 Texas winter storm. Markets and hash rate may see short-term disruption if outages occur.