Seventeen and a half million Instagram accounts just got an unwanted encore appearance on the dark web, thanks to an old API flaw that’s back to cause fresh headaches. According to a security notice from cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes, data tied to roughly 17.5 million Instagram users is circulating freely on Breachforums after resurfacing in early […]
Bitcoin Network Mining Difficulty Falls in Jan 2026
The Bitcoin (BTC) network mining difficulty, the relative computing challenge of adding a new block to the decentralized blockchain ledger, fell slightly to 146.4 trillion on Thursday, in the first difficulty adjustment of 2026.
“The next Bitcoin difficulty adjustment is estimated to take place on Jan 22, 2026, 04:08:12 AM UTC, increasing the Bitcoin mining difficulty from 146.47 T to 148.20 T,” according to CoinWarz.
Average block times are 9.88 minutes at the time of this writing, slightly below the 10-minute target, which means the next difficulty adjustment will increase slightly to align better with the target block time.
Mining difficulty reached new all-time highs in 2025, with the final adjustment of the year slightly increasing the difficulty level. However, even with the slight increase, difficulty remained well below the all-time high of 155.9 trillion recorded in November.
The rising difficulty means increased competition to mine blocks on the network, presenting more challenges to the mining industry, which suffered from macroeconomic, regulatory, and financial headwinds in 2025.
Related: Bitcoin mining’s 2026 reckoning: AI pivots, margin pressure and a fight to survive
2025 was the “harshest margin environment” on record for Bitcoin miners
Bitcoin miners experienced one of the toughest profitability environments on record, as profit margins eroded due to the April 2024 halving, which slashed the block subsidy by 50% and macroeconomic developments.
The crypto market downturn, which began in November, placed additional pressure on Miners and mining companies.
Miner hash price, a critical metric for miner profitability, which tracks expected revenue per unit of computing power expended to mine blocks, fell below breakeven levels in November 2025.
$40 per petahash-second per day is the level at which miners must decide whether to turn their rigs off or continue mining blocks. In November, this metric dropped below $35 — a multi-year low.
The tariffs enacted by US President Donald Trump also strained Bitcoin miners, creating fears of supply chain shortages.
A sharp crypto market downturn, sparked by a flash crash in October, discounted BTC prices by over 30% in November, when BTC hit a low just north of $80,000.
Although Bitcoin prices have rallied since that time, they are still far below the all-time high of over $125,000 reached in October.
Magazine: Bitcoin mining industry ‘going to be dead in 2 years’: Bit Digital CEO
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A16z Crypto Shares Three Crypto Predictions for 2026
The venture capital giant highlights prediction markets, zk-SNARKS, and ‘staked media’ as themes to watch.
Andreessen Horowitz, a technology venture capital firm with more than $90 billion in assets under management (AUM), unveiled its “3 Ways Crypto Goes Beyond Crypto in 2026” on X today, as it prepares for another year of growth.
The article was published by A16z Crypto and highlights new and existing trends it expects to continue to materialize over the next year, specifically new primitives powered by zero-knowledge SNARKs, prediction markets, and what it calls “this rise of staked media.”
The firm specifically calls for integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into the prediction market landscape, where large language models (LLMs) can serve as oracles for disputes and power AI-agent-led trading on prediction platforms.
As for zk-SNARKs, short for zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive argument of knowledge, A16z says that zk virtual machine (zkVM) provers are set to deliver 10,000x productivity, be fast enough to run on phones, and be cheap enough to deploy and “run everywhere.”
Staked Media is the wild card out in the set of predictions.
A16z claims that traditional media is flawed and that its problems are becoming more prevalent as AI-generated content becomes more widely available and affordable.
Robert Hackett, a member of the A16z editorial team, says in the article that “Tokenized assets, programmable lockups, prediction markets, and onchain histories offer stronger foundations for trust.”
“A commentator can publish an argument and also prove they’re putting their money where their mouth is. A podcaster can lock tokens to show they’re not opportunistically flipping or “pumping and dumping.” An analyst can tie forecasts to markets that settle publicly, creating an auditable track record.” Hackett continues.
This tokenization-backed media is what the firm is calling staked media, which enables proof of “skin in the game” for media publications, and functions similarly to prediction markets in the sense that having an opinion is one thing, but actively placing financial value on that opinion, or in this case, content, lends more credibility to the media itself.
A16z Crypto’s portfolio spans dozens of crypto and crypto-adjacent projects, including Anchorage Digital, Kalshi, Coinbase, Morpho, and Yuga Labs.