Bitcoin has spent five straight months trading below what it costs to produce, squeezing miners and forcing some to sell, JPMorgan said in a note. The bank pegs the cost to mine a bitcoin at about $78,000, well above the roughly $62,500 the asset fetches now.
The burden is showing, and about 20% of miners are now unprofitable, the bank said, citing CoinShares data, and listed miners sold more than 32,000 bitcoin in the first quarter to cover operating costs, more than they unloaded in all of 2025.
The network adapts by itself. When the price drops below the cost, higher cost miners shut down, the hash rate or total computing power securing the network drops and mining issues, the automatic setting of how hard it is to mine resets lower.
That played out in early June, when the difficulty dropped 10%, the second drop of that magnitude this year.
Miners also react faster than before. JPMorgan says the difficulty’s sensitivity to price has increased, with more operators sitting close to break-even and turning machines on or off as prices move. The bank expects larger and more frequent adjustments as long as bitcoin stays below production costs.
The outlook is cautious, but JPMorgan marks an upside. The weak sentiment around the sector may itself prove to be a bullish contrarian signal, reflecting the course of accumulation readings, from whale buying to falling currency reserves, pointing in the same direction this month.
