Definition. This chart presents the percent change of the Bitcoin protocol mining difficulty at each difficulty adjustment, with upwards adjustments shown as green columns and downwards adjustments as red columns, alongside the difficulty itself (orange) and price (dark grey).

Technical. The adjustment series is computed as the 8-day percent change of reported network difficulty, split by sign:

• Difficulty Percent Change = percent_change(Difficulty, 8d)
• Positive values are plotted as Upwards Difficulty Adjustment (green), negative values as Downwards Difficulty Adjustment (red)

Since difficulty only changes at each ~2016-block (~2-week) protocol adjustment, each adjustment event registers as a discrete step in the series.

Note: values are presented as %, such that a reading of +35 means a +35% upwards adjustment.

Interpretation. Difficulty adjustments are the protocol's response to changes in deployed hashrate, making this chart a direct record of mining industry expansion and contraction. Sustained sequences of upwards adjustments indicate hashrate growth — new hardware coming online and improving miner economics attracting competition. Downwards adjustments indicate hashpower leaving the network, and clusters of consecutive downwards adjustments have historically coincided with periods of miner stress and capitulation, such as after sharp price declines, halving-driven margin compression, or regional mining shutdowns. The magnitude of each adjustment gauges how abruptly the hashrate mix is changing.

Notes. Built from Difficulty. For a higher-frequency view of hashrate shifts between adjustments, see Mining Pulse; for difficulty as a production-cost input, see the Difficulty Regression Model.