Bitcoin miners were crushed in 2022. What seemed like a year of sufficient capital for expansion, high energy prices, increased competition, and a bear market brought down several mining giants.
After the winter dormancy, Bitcoin miners are back as mining difficulty has risen more than 10%, from 34.09 billion to 37.59 billion, according to data compiled by BTC.com.
Following the development, a leading player in the space, f2pool tweeted,
“Bitcoin mining difficulty increased by 10.26%, to one ATH! In this 2-week cycle, if BTC can rise above $23,000, machines that are more efficient than 40 W/T can run with gains to electricity of $0.08/kWh.”
The figure that determines how difficult it is to mine a Bitcoin block comes amid a bullish reversal in the crypto-asset’s price action. Currently trading at $21,175, Bitcoin managed to wipe out losses from the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire two months ago. The next difficulty change is expected to take place in two weeks, which could be less than a 0.02% drop, at least for now. Meanwhile, in just two weeks of the year, Bitcoin’s mining hash set two new highs even as bankrupt miner Core Scientific shut down 9,000 ASICs in December. This trend could potentially show hash passing from weak to strong hands. At the time of writing, the Bitcoin hash rate is around 271.86 EH/s. In terms of mining pool distribution, Foundry USA has the highest share at 35.5%, followed by AntPool at 20.9%, Binance Pool at 12.3% and f2pool at 10.4%, among others, respectively.
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This post Bitcoin mining difficulty increases 10% to new ATH as miners return
was published first on https://cryptopotato.com/bitcoin-mining-difficulty-surges-10-to-new-ath-as-miners-return/
