The year 2023 and the first month of January have not been good for Bitcoin mining, as in this month, it became even harder to mine Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency in the market. On the 29th of January, the mining difficulty of Bitcoin increased by more than 4% from 37.59 trillion to 39.35 trillion. This new increase took the mining difficulty of Bitcoin to an all-time high.
Mining difficulty of a cryptocurrency, whether Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, is the figure that represents the computational power needed to mine a single BTC or other cryptocurrencies. Every two weeks, it is updated, and when more miners enter the network, the mining becomes difficult, and when these users leave the network, the mining becomes easier. Over the past year, the mining difficulty has been increasing strongly and steadily.
According to data from CoinWarz, on the 30th of January 2022, the mining difficulty stood at 26.24 EH/s. Since that date, the mining difficulty has increased by 39.35 EH/s, around a 50% increase. On the other hand, the hash rate, which measures the amount of computational power dedicated to mining the cryptocurrency, of Bitcoin stands at around 305.81 ExaHashes per second. At the same time last year, Bitcoin’s hash rate was around 182.37 EH/s, which means that in this period, this value increased by more than 67%.
However, despite the increase in both of these values, hash rate, and mining difficulty, the price of Bitcoin hasn’t kept pace. According to data from CoinGecko, on the 30th of January 2020, BTC was trading at around $38,232, and currently, in 2023, it is trading at around $23,211, which means that it decreased by more than 39% over this period. This latest increase in the mining difficulty isn’t good news for the Bitcoin mining industry, because more power could be required to produce the same amount of Bitcoin.
