Drop In: Bitcoin Mining News This Week (Oct 2–9, 2026)

Welcome to the first weekly roundup from Somibo Digital, a self-run Bitcoin (SHA-256) and Scrypt mining crew rolling out of Richmond, Virginia. Every Friday we'll skate through the mining headlines that mattered. New here? Roll over to the Somibo Digital home page to see what we're about. Let's drop in.

The week in five tricks

• Difficulty barely moved. The October 3 retarget nudged Bitcoin difficulty down about 0.03% to 132.72T ¹.
• Hashprice dipped below $40. Hashrate Index showed about $39.36 per PH/s per day on Friday morning ⁴.
• Miner stocks wobbled. Bitcoin-miner-turned-AI stocks fell sharply on Thursday ⁹.
• The AI pivot keeps rolling. Bitdeer, CleanSpark and TeraWulf all made moves ¹⁰¹¹¹³.
• Scrypt is warming up. Litecoin's hashrate hit its highest level since June ¹⁴.

Bitcoin difficulty adjustment: flat now, steeper ahead

Bitcoin's difficulty adjusted at block 969,696 early Saturday, October 3, moving from about 132.76T to 132.72T, roughly −0.03% ¹. Bitcoin.com News called it the smallest move of 2026 and tallied the year's adjustments as a net 11.96% decline since January ³.

The next one could be steeper. As of Friday morning, mempool.space estimates an increase of about 4.5% at block 971,712, around Friday, October 16, because blocks have averaged about 9.6 minutes against the 10-minute target ¹. That's a live estimate that moves with every block, and other trackers show different numbers.

Bitcoin hashprice and hashrate: steady machines, softer price

Hashprice is the expected daily revenue from one petahash per second of hashrate. Hashrate Index read about $39.36 per PH/s per day on Friday morning ⁴. Bitcoin traded around $82,600, down about 4.5% over seven days, per CoinGecko data ⁷, after slipping below $81,000 during Thursday's crypto selloff ⁸.

Hashrate held steady anyway. Mempool.space's daily estimates averaged roughly 984 EH/s for October 3–9 ². Daily readings are noisy, so treat small week-over-week changes as noise. Over a longer window, Hashrate Index's October 5 heatmap put Q3's 30-day average at about 941 EH/s, flat versus Q2 and roughly 15% below the November 2025 peak ⁶. Transaction fees remain a rounding error: about 0.58% of block rewards over the last 1,008 blocks ².

Put it together: steady hashrate, softer price, and an estimated difficulty bump all squeeze hashprice. Hashrate Index's September 28 roundup said the forward market was pricing an average of $38.34 over six months ⁵. September itself was strong: citing Newhedge data, Bitcoin.com News reported $1.12 billion in miner revenue, the best month since January ³.

Bitcoin miners' AI pivot: who moved this week

Bitdeer adds a 67 MW AI campus in Malaysia

On October 8, Bitdeer AI announced a 10-year data center services agreement for A901, a 67 MW AI cloud campus in Malaysia built for liquid-cooled NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 systems, with delivery targeted from Q1 2027 ¹⁰. Bitdeer says its secured AI capacity is now about 273.5 MW, roughly 78% of its target of up to 350 MW. The release also notes that no customer offtake commitments had been signed for A901 yet ¹⁰.

CleanSpark posts September numbers, and its last monthly update

CleanSpark reported 529 BTC mined in September and 50 EH/s of operational hashrate. Its holdings went from 13,703 to 13,530 BTC after 702 BTC left the treasury, 700 of them through call-option exercises ¹¹. It also closed $2.276 billion of 7.875% senior secured notes due 2031 to fund its Sandersville data center build. And it is ending monthly operational updates in favor of quarterly reporting ¹¹. That means one less monthly data point for miner watchers.

TeraWulf powers up Kentucky

On October 5, TeraWulf said an amended agreement with Kentucky Power raises contracted capacity at its Muskie Data Campus from 500 MW to 1 GW. It also pulls the second 500 MW phase forward to 2029, subject to Kentucky Public Service Commission approval ¹³.

MARA moves coins to a Galaxy Digital address

CoinDesk reported that MARA transferred about 996 BTC (around $81 million) to an address tagged to Galaxy Digital, citing Lookonchain data. CoinDesk stressed that the transfer does not confirm a sale ¹².

Miner stocks ate some pavement

On Thursday, intraday per Benzinga (not closing prices): Cipher fell 7.5%, Riot 6.6%, CleanSpark 6.3%, TeraWulf 5.5% and IREN 5.3%. Benzinga cited a falling Bitcoin price and the 30-year Treasury yield near 5.7%, which raises costs for miners funding AI builds with debt ⁹. We report the moves; we don't recommend trades.

Scrypt corner: Litecoin hashrate hits a summer high

The official Litecoin account posted on October 8 that Litecoin's hashrate was at its highest since June 2026, at 2.78 PH/s ¹⁴. Litecoinspace data puts the 7-day average near 2.75 PH/s, up about 6% from the prior week, and Litecoin's last difficulty retarget on October 7 was −1.13% ¹⁵. Dogecoin is merge-mined with Litecoin and pays 10,000 DOGE per block, versus Litecoin's 6.25 LTC subsidy ¹⁶, so Scrypt miners watch both.

What we're watching next week

• The October 16 retarget. Does the roughly 4.5% estimate hold ¹?
• Hashprice vs. $40. Spot slipped just under that line this week ⁴.
• Disclosure gaps. With CleanSpark going quarterly, on-chain transfers like MARA's will draw more attention ¹¹¹².

See you next Friday. Keep your knees bent.

Disclaimer: This post is for general information and entertainment only. It is not investment, financial, tax, or legal advice. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset or security. Figures are as reported by the cited sources on the dates shown and may change. Do your own research.