Bitcoin price prediction: mining difficulty up 6.44 percent on October 29, next target at $83,691

Here is what is documented: the mining difficulty on the Bitcoin network will rise by 6.44 percent at the next adjustment on October 29, after it had already climbed 5.92 percent on October 16. Our assessment follows further below. The two jumps explain why the price has not fallen below $81,400 since October 18, and they do not explain where it runs next. For that, the options expiry on October 30 is the more important date.

Bitcoin traded at $83,532 on Wednesday afternoon, 2.5 percent above Tuesday's level, according to CoinGecko data. The daily high was $83,568 and the daily low $81,273. Market value stands at $1.679 trillion, leaving the price 33.7 percent below its record of $126,080. Where the price can point over a horizon of months, and which time frames our newsroom keeps apart in that view, is set out in our Bitcoin price prediction.

What happens on October 29: difficulty rises 6.44 percent

The mining difficulty is the value that sets how hard the computation is that a miner has to solve to attach a block to the Bitcoin blockchain. The value currently stands at 140.58 trillion and, according to data from mempool.space, jumps to around 149.6 trillion at the coming adjustment. The expected date is October 29, with 1,250 blocks to go and the running cycle 38 percent complete.

The reason for the jump sits in a single number: blocks are arriving too fast. In the current cycle the gap between two blocks is 9 minutes and 24 seconds instead of the targeted 10 minutes. Computing power on the network averages 1,048.7 exahash per second over three days. More machines online mean shorter block times, and shorter block times mean a higher difficulty at the next checkpoint.

How a retarget works and why it hits miners' costs

Every 2,016 blocks, on average roughly every two weeks, the network recalculates how long the past blocks took and sets the difficulty so that the ten-minute cadence holds again. That process is called a retarget. It runs without a vote, without a committee and without discretion, purely by the rule written into the protocol. Each adjustment is capped at a factor of four upwards and a quarter downwards.

What matters for context is what a retarget does NOT do. It does not change how many bitcoin the network pays out. The reward stays at 3.125 bitcoin per block, and there are still 144 blocks a day on average. What changes is the distribution: after a 6.44 percent increase, the same machine earns around 6 percent fewer bitcoin than before. For an operation with fixed electricity costs per kilowatt hour, the cost per bitcoin produced rises by the same measure.

That is where the link to the price comes in, and it is an indirect one. A producer with higher costs cannot sell as low without taking a loss. Miners who hand over their coins continuously to pay for power and salaries need a higher price for the same bill once their costs rise. That is an argument for a floor, not proof of one. A miner with reserves can also sell below cost, and a network with a falling price eventually switches machines off, which lowers the difficulty again at the following adjustment.

Two jumps in 13 days: the comparison with recent months

Taken on its own, 6.44 percent is no record. The sequence is what makes it interesting. On October 16 the difficulty rose from 132.72 to 140.58 trillion, a gain of 5.92 percent. If the expected 6.44 percent follows on October 29, the difficulty will sit 12.7 percent higher than in mid-October within 13 days.

For comparison, the adjustments before that, also according to mempool.space: on October 3 the difficulty barely moved, on September 19 it rose 4.2 percent, on September 5 by 1.3 percent, on August 23 it fell 1.3 percent and on August 8 it rose 1.3 percent. In the three months before mid-October, then, not a single adjustment exceeded 4.2 percent. Two consecutive jumps of around 6 percent each are the exception this year, and they land in a stretch in which the price has given up almost 4 percent.

That combination is the actual finding: computing power is growing while the price falls. Miners bringing machines online now decided on the investment months earlier, when Bitcoin stood above $85,000. That computing power is being delivered into a market that pays less than the calculation assumed.

That is the change since our last piece on the Bitcoin price prediction. On October 20 the focus here was the premium on the futures market: expected volatility stood at 38.3 percent, while the price delivered 20.1 percent. Back then the price was $81,875. Since then $1,657 or 2.0 percent has been added, and the $81,481 level at the centre of that October 20 analysis has held. New today is the cost side for miners, which does not appear in a view of the futures market at all.

October 30: 35.3 percent of all Bitcoin options expire in one day

One day after the retarget comes the bigger date in the calendar. At the options exchange Deribit, 384,688 bitcoin sat in open options contracts on Wednesday according to its own statistics. Of those, 135,924 bitcoin expire on October 30, or 35.3 percent of total open interest. At a price of $83,532 that equals $11.35 billion.

An options expiry does not move the price by itself. What moves it is the hedging on the other side. Whoever sold options holds bitcoin or futures contracts against them and adjusts that counter-position continuously as the price moves. The closer the expiry, the larger those adjustments become near important strike prices, and the more readily short, sharp moves arise with no fresh news behind them. After the expiry that mechanism falls away, because most of the contracts have lapsed.

For the next nine trading days that means two dates are fixed: October 29 and October 30. The first works slowly and through costs, the second quickly and through hedging. Anyone holding a leveraged position this week is dealing with the second.

Buying without leverage, by contrast, comes down mostly to fees and spreads. At $83,532 per bitcoin, a spread of 0.5 percent costs around $418, and on a purchase of 1,000 euros a 1.5 percent fee amounts to 15 euros that the price has to make up first. Which providers in Europe trade at which costs, and which hold a licence under the EU's MiCA regulation, is set out in our overview of the best crypto exchanges.

The levels above and below, and where they come from

Levels are only worth something if you can say where they come from. These four follow from the daily closing prices of the past 60 days according to CoinGecko, as of October 21.

On the downside, the first one that counts is the 50-day average at $81,574. It sits 2.4 percent below the current price and almost exactly on the 30-day low, which was $81,408 on October 18. Those two values form a narrow band 166 dollars wide. As long as the price stays above it, the decline since the start of October is a sideways move with a slight downward tilt. Should it fall below, both the 50-day average and the monthly low will have broken for the first time since July.

On the upside, Bitcoin reclaimed the 20-day average at $83,224 on Wednesday, which now sits 0.4 percent below the price. The next level above it is $83,691, the highest daily close since October 12 and only 0.2 percent away. Only beyond that does the path open to $86,490, the monthly high from October 5. From here that is 3.5 percent.

The range in which all of this plays out is narrow. Between the October 18 low and Wednesday's daily high lie 2.7 percent. That is exactly what makes the two October dates important: in a narrow range, one trigger is enough to touch both edges.

How to check your distance to liquidation

A forced liquidation is the automatic closing of a leveraged position once the collateral no longer covers it. The distance to it can be estimated in one sentence: at 10x leverage it is roughly 10 percent, at 20x leverage about 5 percent, in each case before fees and funding costs.

Hold that against the figures above. Wednesday's daily range alone was 2.7 percent. A position at 20x leverage has around 5 percent of room, so a single trading day this week eats more than half of it. At 30x leverage, a buffer of about 3.3 percent sits inside the normal daily move of the past week.

Three values matter in that check, and all three appear in an exchange's position panel: the liquidation price, the distance in percent to the current price, and the funding rate, which is settled every eight hours on perpetual futures. If the liquidation price falls inside the $81,273 to $83,568 range the price covered on Wednesday, then the position is decided not by the market's direction but by a single hour. Where funding rates and collateral rules differ between individual providers is shown in our overview of the best perp DEXs.

Our assessment: difficulty supports the lower level, the expiry sets the week

From the newsroom's point of view, two documented numbers speak for the lower level and one against it. In favour: difficulty rises 12.7 percent within 13 days, the cost per bitcoin produced rises accordingly, and the price has not retested the October 18 low of $81,408 for three trading days. Against: 135,924 bitcoin in options expire on October 30, and expiry dates of that size regularly bring moves in narrow ranges that no piece of news explains.

Our reading is therefore split in two. Up to October 30 we weight the expiry above the cost side, because it works faster. After that, the higher difficulty becomes a standing factor that applies to miners every day. What would refute this reading is a daily close below $81,408: at that point the market has dismissed the cost side as an argument. Bitcoin remains an asset in which a total loss is possible, and neither of the two numbers changes that.

Holding period and tax: what October means for purchases from 2025

One point that has nothing to do with mining but counts today for many investors in Germany. Under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act, the gain from a private sale of Bitcoin stays tax-free if more than one year lies between purchase and sale. Anyone who bought their bitcoin on October 21, 2025 or earlier passed that deadline on Wednesday. Anyone who bought in November 2025 reaches it in the coming weeks.

Within the year, an exemption limit of 1,000 euros applies to all private disposal transactions in a year taken together. If it is exceeded, the entire gain becomes taxable, not only the part above it. What decides is the purchase date of each individual tranche, not the portfolio average. How far the political debate about this deadline has come and what currently applies, we track continuously on our page on the status of the crypto holding period.

Difficulty and expiry: two dates before October 30

Two dates and four levels add up to a manageable list for the next nine trading days.

1. Note the levels. Below, $81,574 as the 50-day average and $81,408 as the monthly low; above, $83,691 and $86,490. Anyone looking to buy or sell in this area sets the limits in advance and checks the fees at the provider. Which exchanges in Europe trade at which costs is set out in our overview of the best crypto exchanges.
2. Hold the liquidation price against the daily range. 2.7 percent of daily range against 5 percent of buffer at 20x leverage. If your own liquidation price sits between $81,273 and $83,568, the leverage is too large for this week. The differences in funding rates and collateral are shown in the comparison of the best perp DEXs.
3. Look up the purchase date of the oldest tranche. Everything bought on October 21, 2025 or earlier has the one-year deadline under Section 23 EStG behind it. We track the current state of the rule on our page on the crypto holding period.

(As of October 21, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)