Bitcoin Miner Stress Hits 2026 Low; 1 in 5 Unprofitable

The Miner Cycle Stress Composite dropped to a new 2026 low and moved into an “undervalued” range while bitcoin traded near $63,800, with roughly one in five miners operating at a loss.

The Composite combines measures of miner profitability and revenue into a single gauge. The Puell Multiple sits around 0.74, indicating daily miner revenue is about 26% below its 12-month average. Miner revenue fell about 11% over the past 10 days, and the network’s hashrate has contracted more than 25% since October 2025.

Bank analysis estimates bitcoin has traded below an average miner production cost of roughly $78,000 for five consecutive months, leaving an estimated 15%–20% of miners unprofitable. In the latest major difficulty adjustment, the network reduced difficulty by 10.09% to about 124.93 trillion; the February cut was about 11.16%, the largest earlier this year.

Earlier in 2026, miners absorbed an 18% drop in hashprice even as difficulty rose about 7.15%, pushing expected daily revenue per petahash to near $28.68. Some operators have changed plans in response to sustained pressure: a Japanese pool operator announced it will close its mining pool after five years, sending roughly 20,412 PH/s, just over 2% of global hashrate, to find new hosts before the pool stops accepting shares on July 30.

Industry research firms report tightening mining margins and estimate 15%–20% of miners are unprofitable. Several operators are moving computing capacity into artificial-intelligence and high-performance computing workloads to use idle data-center resources.

Market flows offered limited support. U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded net outflows of about $4.5 billion in June, a month in which bitcoin briefly dipped below $60,000.

Research has shown similar miner-stress patterns around past cycle lows. One asset manager found that past hashrate contractions were followed by median 90-day returns in the high-40% range and presented three possible 90-day outcomes spanning modest gains to larger losses.

On-chain metrics also show rising miner pressure. A Miner Capitulation Index moved above 65, a level described by an analyst as evidence of building stress while remaining below extreme levels seen in the 2022 bear market.

Crypto analyst Wu Blockchain posted on X: “The Miner Cycle Stress Composite has fallen to a new 2026 low and entered its ‘undervalued’ range. Similar synchronized declines previously appeared near major Bitcoin bottoms in 2015, 2018, 2020.”

Bitcoin remains about 50% below its October 2025 peak near $126,200. The next notable event for the network is the upcoming difficulty adjustment; another large cut would indicate that unprofitable hashrate continues to leave the network.