CoinDesk Podcast Network The Blockspace Pod: Wall Street Just Gave Your Bitcoin Bonds A (BBB) Triple B Rating
Feb 21, 2026
Jay (Lygos), a Bitcoin lending and custody specialist; Matt (CoinShares), institutional mining and capital strategist; and Kaan (Luxor), mining markets and hash rate analyst. They discuss a historic 14% difficulty spike and weather-driven miner curtailments. They unpack hedging outperforming spot mining post-halving and Ledn’s Triple B rated Bitcoin-backed bond and its securitization structure.
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Weather Drove Historic Difficulty Swings
- January's huge difficulty swings were driven mainly by weather-driven miner curtailment and regional enforcement actions.
- Hash rate dropped ~26% from Oct 2025 to Jan then recovered, causing a +14.73% difficulty rebound on Feb 19, 2026.
Hedging Outperformed Spot Mining
- Luxor's forward hash rate products outperformed spot mining across hedge horizons over the past 12 months.
- Persistent difficulty growth and low fees made disciplined hedging superior to spot FPPS mining since the 2024 halving.
Post-Halving Difficulty Favored Forward Sellers
- Since the May 2024 halving, network difficulty rose ~72% over 21 months, favoring forward sellers.
- A 1 EH miner selling five months forward would have produced ~429 BTC vs 374 BTC mining at spot.