The computing power, or hashrate, deployed on the Bitcoin (BTC) network has been steadily increasing in recent months. But this is not without consequences for Bitcoin miners, since this increase is also accompanied by an increase in the difficulty of mining.
Hashing power reaches a new high
Even though the recent drop in BTC prices could potentially challenge the steady rise in hashrate, it’s clear that this key metric is still at its historical highs.
According to data from the BTC.com website, the estimated daily hash rate has even regularly peaked above 200 EH/s (exahashes per second) in recent days, significantly beating its previous records.
Quite a rebound, after the computing power on the Bitcoin network was put to shame by the ban on crypto mining in China in May 2021. By the time local miners went into exile, the weekly hashrate average had fallen as low as 89 EH/s, by the week of June 27, 2021.
Mining difficulty also breaks records
The Bitcoin network is (well) designed this way: the more computing power there is on its network, the more difficult it is to mine. All this so that the average time between the discovery/validation of each block of transactions is about 10 minutes.
This automatic adjustment, foreseen by Satoshi Nakamoto in the Bitcoin code, has therefore also just reached new historical highs. According to BTC.com data, the difficulty of mining has reached an all-time high of more than 266 T (teras).
Again, this metric is coming back from a long way down, as it had fallen to less than 137 T in mid-July 2021, following the aftermath of the Chinese cryptocurrency ban.
Although this increase in difficulty implies a stronger competition for bitcoin miners, it is also a guarantee of security for this blockchain network in proof of work. Indeed, the higher the difficulty of mining is, the more difficult and costly it makes a possible attack of the 51% on the network.
