Bitcoin's mining difficulty is in the second-longest stretch in its history without a new all-time high.
Last checked ·
What the record actually says
True, with one qualification the claim does not state. Difficulty last set an all-time high of 1.5597 x 10^14 at the adjustment at height 921,312, timestamped 29 October 2025, and had not exceeded it 324 days later on 19 September 2026. Measured between successive all-time highs, the only longer completed stretch caused by a decline is the 364 days from 1 August 2011 to 30 July 2012. There is, however, a longer interval still: the 360 days from the genesis block to the first adjustment on 30 December 2009, during which difficulty sat at its floor of 1 because there was not yet enough hashrate to raise it. Ranking the current stretch second therefore requires excluding that period, which is defensible — it was a starting condition, not a decline — but it is an exclusion and it is unstated. The current stretch passes the 1 August 2011 record on 28 October 2026 and completes a full year on 29 October 2026.
Why it matters to ordinary people
Difficulty is the one number in Bitcoin that no company, exchange or government reports: every node derives it from the block headers. When people argue about whether mining is growing, shrinking or dying, this is the series that settles the factual part, and anyone can recompute it in a single command. A reader does not have to take a miner's word, an index's word or this paper's word for it.
How it is usually mis-stated
“Difficulty peaked on 30 October 2025 and 305 days have passed without a new high.”
The adjustment that set the high is timestamped 29 October 2025. 305 days after 30 October 2025 is 31 August 2026; the figure understates the stretch, which was 320 days on 15 September 2026 and 324 on 19 September.
“This is the longest difficulty drawdown in Bitcoin's history.”
Not yet. The 2011 to 2012 stretch of 364 days is longer, and the current stretch passes it on 28 October 2026.
The primary record
Supports · Retrieved · series through height 965,664
mempool.space mining difficulty and hashrate series from genesisDifficulty series, adjustment at height 921,312, 29 Oct 2025, 10:14 UTC: difficulty 155,973,032,196,071.9375 as Bitcoin Core computes it in floating point from the header's bits 0x1701cdfb (385994235); the series and bitcoin-cli print it as 155973032196071.9
Check it on your own node:
bitcoin-cli getblockheader $(bitcoin-cli getblockhash 921312)Qualifies · Retrieved · series through height 965,664
mempool.space mining difficulty and hashrate series from genesisDifficulty series, adjustments at heights 139,104 (1 Aug 2011) and 191,520 (30 Jul 2012)
Qualifies · Retrieved · series through height 965,664
mempool.space mining difficulty and hashrate series from genesisDifficulty series, genesis (3 Jan 2009) to the first adjustment (30 Dec 2009), difficulty constant at 1
The strongest account that disagrees
No opposing account has been recorded for this claim yet.
Verdict history
Every status this claim has carried, with the date and the reason it changed. A verdict that has never moved has one entry.
- True, imprecisely statedLast checked
First verdict on file; unchanged since publication. Changes are also logged in Corrections.
A claim may only be marked verified, verified with precision, or false when at least one primary record supports that verdict. Commentary and analysis, however respected, never settle a factual claim. A claim about monetary history or monetary theory may not reach a settled status until the strongest opposing account has been recorded, or until the search for one has been described and come back empty. A status change is recorded as a dated correction on the claim and every published piece that relied on it is re-checked.