Bitcoin price prediction: mining gets 7.5 percent easier, what changes for the price

Bitcoin is trading at around $73,470, or roughly €66,250, on Thursday morning, November 12, 2026. What is new today is not a price level but a figure from the network itself: mining difficulty is expected to fall by around 7.5 percent at the next adjustment. That is what the mempool.space calculator shows for block 975,744, which at the current pace will be reached late on Friday evening. It would be the steepest drop since mid-June.

What is established: since the start of November fewer machines have been mining bitcoin, revenue per unit of computing power is close to its low for the year, and blocks are arriving more slowly than intended. Our assessment follows further down: the relief for miners takes selling pressure off the market, but it does not replace buyers. Where the price could head over the coming months is covered in our Bitcoin price prediction.

Bitcoin mining difficulty to fall: a 7.5 percent drop expected on Friday evening

Mining difficulty determines how much computational work a miner has to do to find a new block. The protocol adjusts it every 2,016 blocks so that on average one block is produced every ten minutes. When fewer machines are mining, blocks slow down and difficulty falls at the next adjustment. When more machines join, it rises.

That is exactly what can be seen right now. On Thursday morning the blockchain stood at block 975,533, with 211 blocks left until the adjustment. Since the last adjustment on October 29, the average time between two blocks has been 10 minutes and 49 seconds instead of 10 minutes. From this delay, mempool.space calculates a decline of 7.52 percent. The figure remains an estimate: on November 9, Hashrate Index was still expecting a drop of 6.5 percent, and the last 211 blocks can still shift the value by a few tenths.

The decline follows two sharp increases. On October 16, difficulty rose by 5.92 percent, and on October 29 by a further 5.54 percent to 148.36 trillion. At the start of November, our Bitcoin price prediction on mining difficulty from November 2 was still about growing competition among miners. Two weeks later the picture has flipped: some of the machines that came online in October have been switched off again.

Bitcoin hashrate: the weekly average falls from 1,062 to 979 exahash

The hashrate measures how many computing attempts all miners together perform per second; one exahash is a quintillion attempts. According to the weekly report from Hashrate Index, the seven-day average fell from 1,062 to 979 exahash per second in the week to November 9, a decline of 7.8 percent. The daily figures from mempool.space show the slump even more clearly: on November 9 and 10 they stood at 826 and 825 exahash, and on Wednesday and Thursday back at 984 and 982.

That leaves the network well short of its twelve-month high. On November 27, 2025, miners were running at a daily average of 1,245 exahash; today's value is around 21 percent lower. By our calculation from mempool.space daily data, the 30-day average stands at 1,027 exahash and the 60-day average at 996.

Hashprice at $31.89: why miners are switching off their machines

The hashprice is the revenue one petahash of computing power earns in a day, calculated from the block reward and fees. Hashrate Index puts it at $31.89 per petahash per day for November 9, down from $32.82 a week earlier. The 30-day average is $35.73. The hashprice tracks the bitcoin price almost one for one, because the reward is fixed: 3.125 bitcoin per block, or around 450 new bitcoin a day. At today's price that comes to about $33 million a day for all the world's miners combined.

Fees barely help. Their share of block rewards was just 0.72 percent in the week to November 9. On Thursday morning, according to mempool.space, a fee of 3 satoshis per byte was enough for the fastest confirmation, and 1 satoshi sufficed for confirmation within an hour. The network is quiet, and quiet blocks earn miners nothing extra.

The decisive factor is the price of electricity. Hashrate Index calculates how much a megawatt hour of power earns at the current hashprice: modern machines using less than 14 joules per terahash generate $111 per megawatt hour, older devices at 25 to 38 joules only $42. Anyone paying more than that for power loses money on every block and shuts down. That is what drives the fall in hashrate, and with it the drop in difficulty.

Since Tuesday's bitcoin price prediction: the 200-day line is barely holding

In our Bitcoin price prediction from Tuesday, bitcoin stood at around $73,630, and the intraday low on Kraken was $72,585, the lowest since August 20. The question was whether the zone between $72,000 and $75,000 would hold. Two days later the answer is: so far yes, but without a recovery. According to CoinGecko, the price moved between $73,357 and $74,695 over the past 24 hours, leaving a net loss of 0.3 percent. Over seven days it is down 8.7 percent, over 30 days 12.1 percent.

The 200-day line, the average of the last 200 daily closing prices, stands at $73,125 by our calculation from CoinGecko daily data. Bitcoin is trading only around $350 above it. What has changed since Tuesday is the picture at the US funds: as our bitcoin price report from Thursday morning shows, based on the flow table from Farside Investors, $95 million still flowed out of the spot ETFs on Tuesday, after $430 million a week earlier. Also new is the weakness in mining, which played no role on Tuesday.

Miner capitulation: what earlier difficulty drops showed

When difficulty falls sharply, people often speak of miner capitulation. The term describes a phase in which miners give up, switch off machines and sell their bitcoin holdings to service loans and electricity bills. A well-known signal for this is the Hash Ribbons indicator from analyst Charles Edwards of Capriole Investments. It triggers when the 30-day average of the hashrate falls below the 60-day average. At 1,027 versus 996 exahash, that is not yet the case today.

A look at the three large drops since the start of the year shows that falling difficulty alone does not set a direction. We compared the price on the day of each adjustment with the price 30 days later, in each case using CoinGecko daily data:

Three drops compared

• February 7, 2026, down 11.16 percent: Bitcoin stood at $70,273, and 30 days later at $66,043. That is a loss of 6.0 percent. In the 30 days before, the price had already fallen 23.0 percent.
• March 20, 2026, down 7.76 percent: Bitcoin stood at $69,936, and 30 days later at $75,716, a gain of 8.3 percent.
• June 14, 2026, down 10.09 percent: Bitcoin stood at $64,409, and 30 days later at $62,279, a loss of 3.3 percent. This followed a decline of 20.5 percent in 30 days.

Twice the price kept falling afterwards, once it rose clearly. The difference in the run-up is striking: in February and June the falling difficulty came after a price slide of more than 20 percent, in March after a sideways phase. Today bitcoin is 12.1 percent below where it was 30 days ago, which puts it between the two patterns. Three cases are too few for a rule, but they do show that Friday's step is not a buy signal.

Bitcoin price levels: $73,125 below, $75,451 above

On the downside, the 200-day line at $73,125 comes first. Below it lies Tuesday's low of $72,585. A daily close below both levels would extend the pullback that began in late October and push the hashprice down further, which in turn takes older machines off the network. The next difficulty adjustment would then not come until the end of November.

On the upside, the 24-hour high at $74,695 comes first. Above that is $75,451, the average price at which Strategy bought its bitcoin. In our Bitcoin price prediction of November 9 the price slipped below this level, and it has not reclaimed it on any day since. Only above that do the 100-day average at $77,632 and the 20-day average at $77,740 come into play. The 50-day average, at $81,141, is far away.

Our assessment: miners are selling less, the funds remain the lever

In the editorial team's view, the falling difficulty takes some pressure off the market. From Saturday, every miner will receive around 7 percent more bitcoin for the same computing power, if the mempool.space estimate holds. That reduces the pressure to sell holdings to pay electricity bills. The order of magnitude is clear: all miners together produce around 450 bitcoin a day, a little over $33 million. Even if they sold everything, that would be a third of what the US funds shed on Tuesday alone.

Against this, the relief lasts only as long as the price does not fall further. A hashprice below $32 leaves older machines hardly any headroom, and Hashrate Index shows an average of only $32.69 in the forward market for the next six months. The direction will therefore continue to be set by fund flows and the Fed rate decision on December 9, not by the miners. Friday's step is a relief, not a turning point.

Buying bitcoin: MiCA-licensed exchange or bitcoin ETP

If you want to enter or add to a position in this situation, there are two clean routes in Germany. The first is a crypto exchange licensed under the EU's MiCA regulation. The transition period for providers in Germany has expired, and you can check a licence in the register of the European Securities and Markets Authority, ESMA. Which providers hold the licence and what they cost is shown in our crypto exchange comparison. The second route is a bitcoin ETP held in your securities account at a bank or broker; the differences from the US ETFs, which retail investors in Germany cannot buy, are explained in our guide buying a crypto ETF in Germany.

Shares in mining companies are a different investment. Their prices depend on the hashprice, on power contracts and increasingly on deals with data centres for artificial intelligence. In the week to November 9, according to Hashrate Index, Riot's stock rose 48.3 percent, while American Bitcoin's fell 13.7 percent. That spread has little to do with the bitcoin price.

Leverage ahead of Friday evening

With leverage, the margin for error narrows. If you bet on rising prices with ten-times leverage, you lose the position roughly on a decline of just under ten percent, a little earlier depending on the exchange and the safety margin. From $73,470, that would mean prices around $66,500. The 200-day line is only half a percent below the current price, and a break can quickly trigger liquidations.

How gains and losses from bitcoin sales are taxed depends on the country you live in. A tax tool that reads your exchange data does the calculation for you; a selection is in our crypto tax software comparison.

Bitcoin before Friday evening: below $73,125 things get tight

The difficulty adjustment late on Friday evening takes some pressure off miners. Whether that turns into a recovery will be decided at the 200-day line and by fund flows. Three steps you can take beforehand:

1. Check how you buy: If you buy directly, use an exchange with a MiCA licence. You can compare fees and licences among the providers for buying bitcoin.
2. Keep leverage low: If your position's liquidation level sits above $72,585, a break of Tuesday's levels is enough. You will find a broker with loss limits in our comparison of the best crypto brokers.
3. Record your cost basis: Note the purchase date and price of every position so that your tax and loss calculations are correct later. A portfolio tracker from our comparison of tax tools does this automatically.

(As of November 12, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)