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Bitcoin (BTC) miners are preparing for another difficulty adjustment this week as the computational power required to mine new coins has reached an all-time high.
Crypto mining data provider CoinWarz estimates that the next difficulty adjustment, scheduled for Friday, March 10, will raise the difficulty from 43.05 T to 44.46 T.
With the expected increase, the difficulty of mining new Bitcoin will reach an all-time high. This is despite the fact that it has already reached record highs after a consistent increase in difficulty since the second half of 2022.
Hashrate keeps rising
In general, the increase in Bitcoin mining difficulty is accompanied by an increase in the hashrate (the amount of computational power to mine Bitcoin globally) on the network. As hashrates rise, it also becomes more difficult to ensure that the blockchain maintains an average time of 10 minutes between each block mined.
Since June 2021, the Bitcoin network hashrate has been steadily increasing. This year he first crossed 300 EH/s in late January and hit an all-time high of nearly 400 EH/s in late February.
According to CoinWarz data, recently on March 2nd, the hashrate again approached its all-time high, reaching 385 EH/s.
A rise in hashrate is seen as a sign of network adoption, making the Bitcoin network more secure and resilient to various forms of attacks. For this reason, Bitcoin is considered the safest cryptocurrency on the market.
hard working miner
As a direct result of increased difficulty, miners will inevitably squeeze their margins further. Naturally, after his year-plus of bear markets, this could prove difficult for many of the biggest mining companies.
Earlier this month, major Bitcoin miner Riot Blockchain went public report Earnings reveal that the company lost more than $500 million in mining operations in 2022. The loss was reported by the company in 2021 despite the fact that it produced far more BTC in 2022. It was much larger than the loss of $15.4 million.
Unless the spot price starts rising in a meaningful way, it remains to be seen how Riot and other major mining companies will deal with the continued rise in Bitcoin mining difficulty this year.