Matt Shea’s documentary is bookended by two stark facts. One is that the wealth of the world’s 12 richest people is equal to that of the poorest 50% of humanity (you can argue about whether 12 is exactly right, but it’s certainly a horrifyingly small number). The other is that in recent US election cycles, the fossil fuel industry has been replaced as the biggest political donor by a new force: cryptocurrency.

In an hour that manages to be more entertaining than terrifying despite sailing into very murky waters, Shea explores how a fresh breed of tech billionaires are looking to make a bold new move. He shows that in a traditional western democracy, the principle that citizens all have an equal vote and are all equally beholden to the law is heavily compromised by a tiny minority of rich citizens. These people influence what the electorate votes for, by bankrolling politicians and owning media companies, as well as using their wealth to ensure rules do not properly apply to them. But plutocrats still find this system frustrating, thanks to those pesky elections and that annoying rule of law. What’s next?

Shea meets people who have made silly amounts of wonga from cryptocurrency – a sector that claims to be dedicated to freedom and transparency, but is notoriously resistant to proper accountability. First, he observes as Justin Sun, a Chinese tech entrepreneur with personal wealth of around $8.5bn, gets his crypto trading network Tron listed on Nasdaq without going through the standard process of listing the company, via a “reverse merger” with a failing company. That is to say, he buys the business – which is already listed – and changes its name to Tron Inc.

That’s all perfectly legal and not too remarkable, but soon we’re off to a muddy peninsula in the Danube between Croatia and Serbia. This has been claimed by crypto bros as Liberland, a “micronation” that will supposedly become a hi-tech utopia where no tax is paid and regulatory red tape is eliminated. At the moment, though, it’s a few tents that are regularly raided by Croatian police, who disagree about the land having no pre-existing owner.

Shea meets the president, a man named Vit Jedlicka who tries and fails to control what his acolytes talk to the film-maker about. One of them escapes for a one-on-one with Shea, where he stumbles as he attempts to counter the argument that Liberland’s electoral system, under which the purchase of more crypto “merits” gives you more voting power, means its version of liberty is available to relatively few people. The elected prime minister of Liberland? Justin Sun.

At this point Shea is jousting for fun with weirdos, as he is when he talks to the writer Curtis Yarvin, who believes democratic governments are inferior to rule via corporate boards headed up by CEO “monarchs”. The programme gets wackier still when Shea arrives in Singapore for Token 2049, a conference for people who believe crypto is the future and governments can’t be trusted. A man with bitcoin logos all over his suit babbles something about a “new world order” imminently implementing a satanic global dominion.

There’s more fun and games as Shea tours the crypto-themed stands, but one of the main sponsors of the event is Tron, and the keynote speaker is Donald Trump Jr. He’s there on behalf of World Liberty Financial, the crypto company co-founded by the Trump family, who are estimated to have made more than $2bn from their various cryptocurrency ventures. Several investors in World Liberty – among them Justin Sun, before he spectacularly fell out with the Trumps – have subsequently benefited from favourable legal or regulatory decisions by the US government. Trump has denied any link between investments in his family companies and government decisions affecting the investors. His representative calls it: “the same, tired narrative that Democrats have pushed … for a decade. … There are no conflicts of interest.” When Shea raises the issue with Sun, a PR adviser heckles from behind the camera and shuts the question down.

Here is where Shea’s thesis falters slightly. Replacing governments with digital hegemonies might make sense to crypto billionaires, who don’t have to worry about things a functional society offers such as reliable physical infrastructure or a healthy workforce, because they just want machines to turn their money into more money. But taking over countries, or setting up new ones, is unnecessary for now thanks to the Trump regime. There’s no need to form your own government if the current US administration already offers frictionless routes to even greater wealth.

Either way, though, none of this is good and all of it is to be monitored, albeit probably from a position of helpless impotence. The rich keep getting richer and the powerful keep finding ways to help them do it.

The adjustment landed at block height 957600. Difficulty moved from 133.87 trillion to 127.17 trillion, a decline of roughly 6.70 trillion. The change took effect at 4:09:11 p.m., based on the block timestamp. The prior epoch ran about 14 days, 18 hours, and 9 minutes, longer than Bitcoin’s 14-day target for 2,016 blocks. That pace works out to an average block time of 10 minutes, 32 seconds, about 5.1% slower than the protocol’s 10-minute target. The 5% cut brought the network back toward that target.

A Year Defined by Wide Swings

Eight of the 14 difficulty adjustments so far in 2026 have been negative and six positive. The average adjustment was negative 0.87%, but the average absolute move was 5.30%, a gap that points to sharp back-and-forth activity hiding behind a mild-looking average. Compounded from the difficulty in place before the first adjustment on Jan. 8, the network has dropped approximately 14.22%. The July 11 reading ranks as the third-lowest of the year, behind only June 13’s 124.93 trillion and Feb. 7’s 125.86 trillion.

Hashrate Slides Toward Its 2026 Range

The seven-day average hashrate via hashrateindex.com stood near 908 EH/s on July 11, down about 14.8% from the Jan. 1 level of roughly 1,065 EH/s. That figure sits about 21.3% below the one-year peak of 1,154 EH/s reached in October 2025, and just 3.3% above the 2026 low of 879 EH/s set in early February.

The most recent drop happened fast. Hashrate was near 986 EH/s on July 1 and fell to about 908 EH/s by July 11, a decline of roughly 7.9% in ten days. That pullback slowed block production and fed directly into the 5% difficulty cut.

Hashprice Climbs but Stays Deeply Discounted

Hashprice, the expected revenue miners earn per petahash per second, closed near $31.1 on July 11. That marks a recovery of about 12.5% from the $27.6 level seen around July 1, but the metric remains down roughly 16.4% since Jan. 1 and about 37.2% below its one-year high of $49.4, reached in late October 2025. The 2026 low of $27.2 came in early June.

How Difficulty, Hashrate, and Hashprice Fit Together

Difficulty is a lagging measure. It does not track hashrate directly, but it reacts to how fast the previous 2,016 blocks were mined. When hashrate falls, blocks slow, and difficulty drops at the next adjustment. Lower difficulty then raises the expected revenue for each unit of hashpower still running, which can lift hashprice if Bitcoin’s price and fee income hold steady.

The June-to-July stretch shows the mechanism in motion. Hashprice bottomed near $27.2 in early June. Difficulty fell 10.09% on June 13. Hashrate then returned and difficulty rose 7.15% on June 26. Hashrate weakened again, and difficulty fell another 5% on July 11, with hashprice ending the period at $31.1.

All three measures have traced a pattern of lower highs in 2026. Difficulty peaked at 146.47 trillion on Jan. 8 and has not come close since, topping out near 138.97 trillion in April and 133.87 trillion in June. Hashprice peaked at $49.4 in October 2025, then $41.8 in January, then $39 in May. Hashrate peaked at 1,154 EH/s in October 2025, 1,087 EH/s in late February, and has struggled to hold 1,000 EH/s since.

What It Means for Miners and Traders

Each recovery in hashrate and hashprice has fallen short of the one before it. Difficulty relief has softened the blow for miners still operating, but it has not been enough to restore hashprice to earlier levels. For traders, the pattern points to a mining sector adjusting to tighter margins rather than one in a single sustained pullback. Effective computing power has repeatedly returned to a band between roughly 880 and 910 EH/s before rebounding, though it remains unclear whether that range marks a durable floor or another stop on the way lower.

The last time Bitcoin experienced such a prolonged drop was in 2022, when several of crypto’s largest players—including the crypto exchange FTX—collapsed and brought the digital assets market down with them. That period saw Bitcoin plunge 76% from its then–all-time high in 2021 to $16,000 in 2022.

In 2026, the backdrop is different. President Donald Trump has become one of the industry’s biggest boosters, and Wall Street titans like BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase are announcing blockchain-based products left and right. So, why is Bitcoin tanking?

Here are three reasons why the world’s largest cryptocurrency remains mired in a bear market, according to four industry analysts:

Four-year cycles

For over a decade, Bitcoin has  seen three years of significant price appreciation followed by one year of decline. Before the 2022 collapse, the cryptocurrency experienced a downturn in 2018, following the boom and bust of initial coin offerings, or token-based fundraises; and in 2014, following the catastrophic collapse of Mt. Gox, the sector’s largest exchange at the time.

Because the four-year cycle has repeated itself multiple times, investors are now conditioned to expect it, according to Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at the crypto asset manager Bitwise.

“One of the primary reasons for that four-year cycle is actually investor psychology,” Hougan told Fortune. “As we got towards the tail-end of 2025, we started to see some long-term Bitcoin holders… beginning to lighten up on their position.” 

Rising inflation

But, this time around, the collapse of an exchange isn’t keeping Bitcoin down. Macroeconomic conditions are to blame, said Zach Pandl, head of research at digital asset manager Grayscale.

In June, year-over-year inflation rose to 4.1% amid increases in oil prices linked to the U.S. conflict with Iran, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. That’s more than double the Federal Reserve’s long-term target of 2%. 

Increasing inflation has led institutions like Bank of America to predict that Fed chairman Kevin Warsh will raise interest rates later this year, which is bad for Bitcoin. Riskier assets like cryptocurrencies usually see outflows as investors buy up less-risky debt that promises higher yields.

“[We] have seen that pattern play out with Bitcoin’s price over the last several years,” Grayscale’s Pandl told Fortune. “When the Federal Reserve cut interest rates to zero in COVID, Bitcoin’s price increased. When [it] decided that interest rates were too low and sharply raised [them], Bitcoin’s price declined.”

Excess leverage

Crypto wouldn’t be crypto without risk-taking, and leveraged trading has also led to the current downturn in digital assets, said Bitwise’s Hougan and Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant.

Bull markets tend to encourage investors to take on leverage, or borrow against their positions to buy more assets. For example, Strategy, the world’s largest digital asset treasury, ramped up purchases in 2024 and 2025 to accumulate about 4% of Bitcoin’s total supply, financing much of that buying spree with new equity and debt issuances.

The company’s Bitcoin funding approach spurred similar playbooks across the market, with other firms raising capital to build up their own digital asset stockpiles. But as Bitcoin’s price declined, that model came under pressure. Since October, Strategy’s stock price has fallen by 75%.