Bitcoin mining difficulty rises to a new all-time high

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty level rose 3.22% on Thursday, hitting an all-time high, as the network’s hashrate also increased to a record high. The difficulty changes roughly every two weeks and measures how hard a miner would have to work to verify transactions on a block. A higher difficulty reading indicates that it is more competitive to mine Bitcoin.

See related article: Could Bitcoin mining make renewable energy more profitable?

Fast facts

• The mining difficulty reading came in at 49.55 trillion at block height 790,272 in Thursday’s adjustment, rebounding from a 1.45% decline in the previous adjustment on May 4, according to data from BTC.com.
• The difficulty of mining Bitcoin typically rises when more miners go online, which raises competition. Miners are rewarded Bitcoin for validating transactions on the network. Their profitability is highly dependent on Bitcoin spot price and mining difficulty.
• Mining difficulty adjustments have been highly correlated to changes in hashrate, the level of computing power used for mining.
• Bitcoin’s hashrate, a measure of computational power used for mining, was at around 368.5 exahashes per second on Wednesday, up from 350.8 exahashes on May 4, data from Blockchain.com shows.
• Bitcoin’s price edged up 1% over the last 24 hours to trade at US$27,276 at 1:40 p.m. in Hong Kong, and slid 0.72% over the past seven days, according to data from CoinMarketCap. The largest coin by market capitalization traded at around US$29,000 on May 4, up about 64% this year.

See related article: Biden administration pushes for 30% electricity tax in swipe at crypto miners

Source