Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Increases For Eighth Consecutive Time – What Does This Mean?

Despite the current state of the crypto market, Bitcoin miners are finding it even more difficult to produce blocks and run their operations. Bitcoin mining difficulty reached an all-time high, but an even more remarkable fact is that this increase is the eighth in a row, which could mean several things for the growing crypto network.

Data from Bitcoin analytics platform CoinWarz shows that the current Bitcoin mining difficulty is at an all-time high (ATH) of 110.45 trillion. This difficulty adjustment occurred on January 13th at block height 878,976, which represents a 0.61% increase from the previous value.

Mining difficulty reaches new ATH

Bitcoin mining difficulty indicates how difficult it is to mine a new block on the crypto network. The adjustment occurs every 2,016 blocks, roughly every 14 days, to ensure blocks are mined every ten minutes on average. The difficulty must increase to ensure that blocks are not generated too quickly, especially with more hashing power and mining machines added to the Bitcoin network.

The difficulty has increased by 6.29% in the last 30 days and by 19.99% in the last 90 days. However, data from CoinWarz indicates that the next adjustment, which will occur in the next 13 days, would bring the difficulty of its ATH from 110.45 trillion to 109.54 trillion, which represents a decline of 0.83%.

Bullish or bearish signal?

Historical data shows that consecutive spikes in Bitcoin difficulty could be considered a bullish or bearish signal.

According to a Coindesk report, at some point during the last bullish cycle, Bitcoin’s difficulty witnessed nine consecutive positive adjustments. The latter coincided with the market top bitcoin (BTC), reaching $69,000 in November 2021. Then, the bearish phase began.

However, in 2018, Bitcoin made similar adjustments without recovering as in 2021. After BTC reached the top of the bull market at $20,000 in December 2017, the crypto network made 17 consecutive positive adjustments until in mid-2018. At the time of the next negative adjustment, BTC was worth around $6,000. This means that while the mining difficulty of Bitcoin increased, the value of BTC decreased.

In the current cycle, Bitcoin mining difficulty started this upward trend on October 9th at 92.04 trillion. Since then, the difficulty has increased sevenfold over the past 96 days. Although analysts insist that BTC is still in a bullish cycle and has room to grow, the asset has been struggling since the beginning of the year.

However, it remains to be seen whether BTC has peaked during this cycle. At the time of writing, it was changing hands at $91.00.

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