Bitcoin’s 15% difficulty spike allows one on-chain metric to flip miners from sellers to hoarders in days

Bitcoin's mining difficulty recently increased by about 15% to 144.40T, the largest jump since 2021, occurring while the price hovers around the mid-$60,000s. This difficulty hike acts as a cost multiplier, increasing the work required to earn blocks and subsequently lowering the hashprice (revenue per unit of hashrate) from roughly $33.5 to $29.7 per PH/s/day. This compression in margins forces miners to address immediate cash-flow gaps, often by selling BTC from their treasuries, which introduces potential short-term selling pressure into range-bound markets. The squeeze typically ends via price strength, fee strength, or difficulty relief. The constructive outlook suggests that the high difficulty reflects a strong, secure network, and the resulting squeeze acts as a clearing event, pushing less efficient miners out and concentrating hashrate among stronger operators. Observers should watch hashprice levels, price action around $65,000, transaction fees, and the next difficulty adjustment to gauge the market's absorption of this pressure.

(Source：CryptoSlate)