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Bitcoin miners are increasingly operating near breakeven levels, making the network’s hashrate and mining difficulty more sensitive to price swings, JPMorgan said.

The bank said tighter margins have made mining activity more responsive to bitcoin’s movements, with both hashrate and difficulty showing a stronger correlation with price this year. Over the past six months, the beta of mining difficulty relative to BTC has risen to 0.62, indicating faster adjustments in network computing power to changing market conditions.

Led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, analysts noted that mining profitability has weakened significantly, with bitcoin trading below estimated production costs for five consecutive months.

Hashrate measures the total computational power used to secure the Bitcoin network and is expressed in exahashes per second.

JPMorgan said a growing share of miners are now operating close to or below breakeven, increasing the network’s vulnerability to price volatility.

The bank estimates that around 20% of miners are currently unprofitable, citing CoinShares data, as mining conditions deteriorated further in 2026.

Financial pressure has also led to higher bitcoin sales by miners, with publicly listed firms liquidating more than 32,000 BTC in the first quarter—exceeding their total sales for all of 2025.

As a result, even modest price moves are having a greater impact on network behavior. When bitcoin falls below production costs, higher-cost miners shut down equipment, causing hashrate to drop and mining difficulty to adjust lower. JPMorgan pointed to the second week of June, when difficulty fell 10%, the second such decline this year.

The bank expects this heightened sensitivity to persist as long as bitcoin trades below its estimated production cost of around $78,000. Bitcoin was last seen near $64,700.

Meanwhile, miners are increasingly shifting toward artificial intelligence and high-performance computing to diversify revenue streams, with AI hosting deals offering more stable and potentially higher-margin income compared with bitcoin mining. However, JPMorgan warned that execution challenges and heavy capital requirements remain key risks.