Bitcoin Hash Rate Just Fell to a 3-Week Low — But Miners Added 8,087 BTC: 5 Signals the Market Is Misreading the Sell-Off

Bitcoin's hash rate just fell to a three-week low of 1.027 ZH/s — and miners responded by adding 8,087 BTC to their treasuries instead of selling. That contradiction is the whole story: the network's computing power is cooling while the people who run it are hoarding harder than they have in six weeks. One of those two signals is wrong about where Bitcoin goes next, and the data says it is not the miners.

Bitcoin trades near $75,900 on November 8, roughly 40% below its $126,080 all-time high from October 6, 2025, after five straight weekly losses and $1.28 billion fleeing US spot Bitcoin ETFs. Against that backdrop, a falling hash rate looks like one more crack in the foundation. It is not. Hash rate, miner revenue, the Puell Multiple and miner balances together tell a different story — one of a squeeze, not a surrender.

What Just Happened: The Numbers in One Place

The week's mining data, taken together, is unusually clear. Bitcoin's seven-day average hash rate slipped to about 1.027 zettahashes per second (ZH/s), a three-week low, after falling roughly 12.45 exahashes per second in the week through October 31. In the same window, miners added 8,087 BTC to their aggregate holdings, lifting them to about 1.202 million BTC — the largest weekly increase in roughly six weeks. The Puell Multiple, which compares miners' daily revenue with its 365-day average, slipped to 0.93.

Those three numbers should not coexist if miners were capitulating. When miners panic, hash rate falls and their balances fall, because they sell coins to cover costs. This week hash rate fell while balances rose by more than $600 million at current prices. That is hoarding behaviour, not distress selling. The TokenPost report on miner holdings puts the weekly addition at 8,087 BTC, the largest in about six weeks.

The rest of the ledger fills in the picture. Miners earned $1.215 billion in October — their best month since November 2025 — even as the Bitcoin price slipped 7.3% during the month. Hashprice fell 17.5% to about $33.18 per petahash per day. Network difficulty sits at 148.36 trillion after a 5.5% upward adjustment on October 29, with the next adjustment expected around November 13 and currently estimated at roughly -2.8%.

What Hash Rate Actually Measures — and Why a 3-Week Low Is Not a Collapse

Hash rate is the number of hash calculations Bitcoin miners perform every second. It is the standard gauge of the computing power securing the network, and it is estimated from difficulty and block times rather than counted directly. Nobody measures it precisely: the estimate comes from the formula hash rate ≈ difficulty × 2³² ÷ seconds per block.

That estimation method matters, because short-term readings swing wildly on luck alone. A one-day hash rate reading rests on about 144 blocks, so chance alone moves it by around 8%. Daily estimates between October 24 and November 1 ranged from 964 to 1,228 EH/s — a 27% gap driven mostly by block-time variance, not by machines switching off. The seven-day average smooths most of that noise, and even on that measure the network sits at roughly 1,027–1,062 EH/s, about 8% below its all-time high of 1,156 EH/s set on October 18, 2025.

Context kills the panic narrative. Hash rate crossed back above 1,000 EH/s (1 ZH/s) on October 11 and has held there since October 14. It peaked at 1,088 EH/s on October 26, the highest reading since December 29, 2025. The forward market expects the climb to resume, pricing implied hash rate of about 1,056 EH/s for November, 1,059 EH/s for December and 1,100 EH/s by March 2027.

History agrees. Difficulty fell 19.9% from a record 155.97 trillion on October 29, 2025 to 124.93 trillion on June 14, 2026 while the Bitcoin price more than halved — and the network kept producing a block every ten minutes throughout. Hash rate falls when machines switch off, and machines switch off when power gets expensive or price gets cheap.

For readers new to how the network works, our beginner's guide to Bitcoin mining explains the full process, from hash functions to block rewards, and our What Is Bitcoin guide covers the fundamentals of the asset miners are securing.

Signal 1: Miners Are Hoarding, Not Selling — 8,087 BTC in One Week

The single most important number this week is not the hash rate. It is 8,087 — the number of BTC miners added to their treasuries in the week through November 7, taking aggregate miner holdings to about 1.202 million BTC. That was the largest weekly gain in roughly six weeks, and it followed a 1,797 BTC addition the week before, when holdings reached 1.1941 million BTC.

Miner balances are the most honest signal in Bitcoin. Miners have bills to pay in dollars — electricity, rent, debt — so when revenue gets tight they sell. When they hold, or add, they are saying their costs are covered and they would rather own the coin at $75,900 than the cash. Two consecutive weeks of accumulation, totalling nearly 10,000 BTC, while the price fell and ETF investors fled, is a deliberate vote of confidence from the only market participants who must sell to survive — and who are choosing not to.

It also matters who is doing the hoarding. The United States runs 35.6% of global hash rate, followed by Russia at 18.1% and China at 11.7%, according to the latest quarterly heatmap. Among pools, Foundry USA mined 26.2% of blocks over the past 30 days, ahead of AntPool at 20.5% and F2Pool at 16.6%. The top three pools together found 63.3% of all blocks. Concentration like that is a decentralisation debate for another day — but it means miner behaviour is driven by a small number of large, professional, well-capitalised operators who can afford to wait.

Signal 2: The Puell Multiple at 0.93 — Stress, Not Surrender

The Puell Multiple compares miners' current daily revenue with its average over the previous 365 days. A value of 1.00 means miners are earning exactly their annual average. The metric dropped to 0.89 on November 2 — its lowest level since September 19 — and its seven-day average fell from 1.11 to 1.00 in a single week, a 10% decrease. The latest reading sits at 0.93.

That sounds bad until you look at the scale. In 2026 the Puell Multiple fell below 0.60 for 11 days — in February, April, June and July — with the lowest reading reaching 0.54 on June 7. Those are the levels where miners are genuinely underwater and forced selling begins. Today's 0.93 is far from that zone. The metric has remained between 0.89 and 1.30 since August 24 and is currently in the lower half of that range.

As CryptoQuant's analysis of the November 2 reading put it, miners are earning less, but they are not being forced to sell: the move is best interpreted as a normal cooling off following a strong rise, not as a signal of surrender. The line to watch is 0.89 — a drop below it would break the post-August range.

Signal 3: Hashprice at $33 — the Breakeven Math That Decides Who Survives

Hashprice is the single number that decides mining revenue: what one unit of hash rate earns per day. It closed October at $33.18 per petahash per day, down 17.5% from $40.24 on October 1, and stood at about $33.26 on November 2, according to Hashrate Index's weekly mining roundup and Bull Miners' November profitability report.

At $33 per PH/day, mining in November 2026 is profitable only on cheap power. A modern 13.5 J/TH Antminer S21 XP breaks even at roughly $0.10 per kWh; an 18.5 J/TH WhatsMiner M60S breaks even at about $0.075 per kWh; and nothing current pays on European household electricity. That is why the pain is uneven: miners with sub-$0.05 power in Texas, Paraguay or Ethiopia are still comfortably profitable, while miners on expensive grids are switching off — which is exactly what a 2.7% weekly hash rate decline looks like.

This is the mechanism behind the headline. Hash rate is not falling because Bitcoin is broken. It is falling because the least efficient machines, on the most expensive power, are pausing — while the efficient fleet keeps running and its owners keep the coins. The coming difficulty adjustment, estimated at about -2.8% around November 13, will then lower the bar for everyone left, restoring margins for the survivors. That is the protocol working as designed, not failing.

Signal 4: October Revenue Hit $1.215 Billion — the Best Month in a Year

Here is the number that contradicts the doom narrative most directly: Bitcoin miners generated $1.215 billion in revenue in October, their best monthly result since November 2025 and up 8.5% from $1.12 billion in September. They did it even as the Bitcoin price slipped 7.3% during the month, because hash rate kept climbing and blocks arrived faster than the protocol's 10-minute target — every 9 minutes 33 seconds on average instead of every 10.

Total revenue rose while per-unit profitability fell. That is the paradox of a growing network in a falling market: more machines share a shrinking dollar pie, so each machine earns less, but the industry as a whole takes in more.

The caveat is real, though. If the Bitcoin price declines further in November, weaker miners will exit — and the $33 hashprice leaves little cushion. November could see the first genuine wave of shutdowns if BTC breaks below $70,000. But October's revenue print says the industry entered this correction from a position of strength, not weakness.

Signal 5: Mining Stocks Crashed 11% — the Market Has Already Priced the Pain

Bitcoin mining stocks fell hard in the week to November 2: 17 of 18 declined, with a median move of -11.0%. The worst performer, BTDR, fell 15.1%; the only gainer, SLNH, rose 11.5%. Public miners have been hit twice over — by the Bitcoin price and by the AI selloff that dragged down the tech stocks many of them are now pivoting toward.

For contrarians, that washout is informative. When an entire sector falls 11% in a week while its underlying operators are accumulating the asset and earning record monthly revenue, the equity market is pricing a scenario — mass miner capitulation — that the on-chain data does not yet show. Either the stocks are right and the on-chain data will catch down, or the stocks overshot and the miners' hoarding is the tell.

The broader market context reinforces the stakes. Bitcoin has now posted five straight weekly losses, US spot Bitcoin ETFs lost $1.28 billion in the week to November 6 — their largest weekly outflow since late June — and the Crypto Fear & Greed Index reads 26, deep in Fear territory. Traders are watching the October CPI report due November 10 as the next catalyst. Our analysis of Bitcoin's fifth straight weekly loss shows only two longer losing streaks in history — and what happened next both times. The CPI preview in our November 10 CPI guide maps the three numbers that decide whether BTC holds $75,000 or falls toward $68,000.

What Most People Get Wrong About Falling Hash Rate

Myth 1: A falling hash rate means Bitcoin is less secure. Security scales with the cost of attacking the network, and at over 1,000 EH/s an attack remains prohibitively expensive. A 2.7% weekly dip changes nothing about the cost of a 51% attack in practical terms.

Myth 2: Miners selling is the same as miners switching off. This week proves the opposite: machines switched off while miners bought. Hash rate measures computing power, not miner sentiment. Miner balances measure sentiment — and they rose.

Myth 3: Hash rate leads price. The relationship runs the other way. Price leads hash rate: miners deploy machines when price and fees justify it, and switch them off when they do not. A hash rate dip after a 40% price correction from the all-time high is a lagging confirmation of a move that already happened, not a prediction of the next one.

Myth 4: Difficulty only ever rises. Difficulty adjusts every 2,016 blocks, roughly every two weeks, in either direction. The expected -2.8% adjustment around November 13 would be the first meaningful downward move since the autumn, and it directly restores miner margins — the protocol's built-in stabiliser.

Myth 5: Miner capitulation is always a buy signal — or always a sell signal. Neither. Capitulation bottoms have historically marked attractive entries, but only when confirmed by balances stabilising and hash rate recovering. We have the first (balances rising) without the second (hash rate still falling). That is a watch-and-wait setup, not a green light.

Bull, Base and Bear: Three Scenarios for Bitcoin From Here

Scenario	Trigger	BTC price path	Probability*
Bull: miners were right	CPI cools on Nov 10; ETF outflows reverse; difficulty cut restores margins	Reclaim $78,000, then test $80,000–$85,000	30%
Base: grinding stabilisation	CPI in line; hash rate flatlines near 1.02–1.05 ZH/s; Puell holds above 0.89	Range $73,000–$78,000 into late November	45%
Bear: capitulation arrives	Hot CPI; BTC breaks $75,000; Puell falls below 0.89; miners start selling	Slide toward $68,000–$70,000, then $65,000	25%

*Scenario probabilities are the author's judgement based on the data cited in this article, not a forecast. They are labelled as such and will be wrong — the levels are what matter.

The base case is the most likely precisely because the mining data is mixed rather than extreme. Nothing in the miner data screams capitulation, and nothing screams a bottom either. The market is waiting for the November 10 CPI report to break the tie — and for the November 13 difficulty adjustment to show whether the hash rate dip was a blip or the start of a trend.

What to Watch Next: A 5-Point Checklist

• November 10 CPI: A cool reading revives rate-cut bets and relieves the macro pressure behind the ETF outflows. A hot reading does the opposite. This is the week's biggest single catalyst.
• November 13 difficulty adjustment: If it lands near the estimated -2.8%, miner margins recover automatically. A deeper cut would signal more machines switching off than expected.
• Puell Multiple vs 0.89: Holding above the post-August range floor keeps the "cooling off, not surrender" reading intact. Breaking below it is the first genuine capitulation warning.
• Miner balances next week: A third straight week of accumulation confirms the hoarding thesis. A reversal into net selling would mean miners' costs have caught up with them.
• ETF flows: US spot Bitcoin ETFs lost $1.28 billion last week, with BlackRock's IBIT accounting for $1.21 billion of it. Two consecutive weeks of outflows of that size would overwhelm any miner accumulation.

FAQs

What is Bitcoin hash rate?

Hash rate is the number of hash calculations Bitcoin miners perform every second — the standard gauge of the computing power securing the network. It is estimated from difficulty and block times, not counted directly, and Bitcoin's network currently runs at roughly 1,027 exahashes per second (about 1.027 ZH/s).

Why did Bitcoin's hash rate fall in November 2026?

The seven-day average fell about 2.7% in the week to November 2 and then to a three-week low of 1.027 ZH/s, as Bitcoin's 40% correction from its $126,080 all-time high and a hashprice of about $33 per PH/day made mining unprofitable for operators on expensive power. Less efficient machines switched off while the efficient fleet kept running.

Is a falling hash rate bad for Bitcoin?

Not by itself. Hash rate follows price, not the other way around, and short-term readings swing by up to 8% on block-time luck alone. What matters is whether miners are selling (capitulation) or holding (confidence). This week they added 8,087 BTC to their treasuries, which points to confidence, not distress.

What is the Puell Multiple and what does 0.93 mean?

The Puell Multiple compares miners' current daily revenue with its 365-day average. At 1.00 miners earn their annual average; at 0.93 they earn 7% below it. Genuine capitulation territory is below 0.60 — the metric hit 0.54 in June 2026. At 0.93, miners are under pressure but not forced to sell.

Are Bitcoin miners selling their BTC?

No — the opposite. Miners added 8,087 BTC to aggregate holdings in the week to November 7, taking them to about 1.202 million BTC, the largest weekly increase in roughly six weeks. That followed a 1,797 BTC addition the week before.

When is the next Bitcoin difficulty adjustment?

Around November 13, 2026, at block 975,744. Early estimates point to a decrease of roughly 2.8%, which would lower the bar for miners and restore margins for the machines still running.

Conclusion

Bitcoin's hash rate fell to a three-week low this week, and on its own that headline reads like bad news. The full dataset says otherwise. Miners earned their best monthly revenue in a year in October. They added 8,087 BTC to their treasuries. The Puell Multiple sits at 0.93 — stressed, but far above the 0.60 capitulation zone.

The honest read is that Bitcoin mining is in a squeeze, not a surrender. The least efficient machines are pausing, the efficient ones are hoarding, and the market is waiting on the November 10 CPI report to decide whether $75,000 holds. If miners keep accumulating and the Puell Multiple holds above 0.89, this week's hash rate dip will look in hindsight like a routine cooling-off in a network still running at over a zettahash per second. If balances reverse and the Puell breaks down, the miners themselves will be telling us the bottom is not in yet. Either way, the miners' wallets — not the headlines — are the signal to watch. For a broader view on whether Bitcoin is worth owning at these levels, see our honest 2026 guide to Bitcoin as an investment.

Sources: TokenPost, CryptoQuant, Hashrate Index, MillionMiner, CoinStats. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.