It’s Never Been So Difficult to Mine Bitcoin; Miners Offload More BTC

Bitcoin (BTC) mining difficulty just reached a new all-time high, increasing pressure on less efficient miners that have already started selling more BTC.

Bitcoin mining difficulty, which is the measure of how hard it is to compete for mining rewards, just jumped by 9.89%, climbing above 17 T for the first time and reaching 17.35 T.

Last time it increased more was in September of 2019, when it jumped by 10.38%.

The difficulty is adjusted every 2,016 blocks, or around two weeks to maintain the normal 10-minute block time. Since June 30, it has been below 10 minutes, as more miners turned more powerful machines on, pushing Bitcoin hashrate, or the computational power of the network, to its new highs.

Bitcoin hasrate (7-day moving average):

As an industry insider previously told Cryptonews.com, hashrate has recently increased mainly because newer-generation machines coming online from pre-orders, which were placed a few months ago. Another miner estimated that not many mining machines would be forced to shut down inside China, which accounts for approximately 70% of the total hashrate, after this difficulty adjustment. Also, Jiang Zhuoer, CEO of BTC.TOP, a Bitcoin mining pool and mining services provider, doesn’t expect hashrate to change much this summer.

Meanwhile, miners “on the fringe” will be making decisions to liquidate more of their BTC to pay bills, or shutting down their old-generation machines hoping for a reversal in the next difficulty adjustment, as Tim Rainey, Chief Financial Officer of Greenidge Generation, New York-based fully compliant cryptocurrency mine-power plant hybrid, told Cryptonews.com last week.

Since Friday, miners have already started selling more BTC than they are generating:

At pixel time (11:53 UTC), BTC trades at USD 9,343 and is up by 0.5% in a day and 1% in a week.