While bitcoin prices have consolidated around the $50K zone, the network’s hashrate has reached an all-time high (ATH) on December 8, 2021, tapping 194.95 exahash per second. While mining bitcoin has been 8.33% more difficult since December 11, Bitcoin miners have seen a significant increase in their processing power.
Bitcoin Hashrate Taps 194 EXAHASH per Second on December 8. Mining Difficulty Jumps More Than 8% 3 Days Later
Bitcoin prices have reached new all-time records in 2021. Similarly, Bitcoin’s hashrate has also seen record highs on two occasions this year as the SHA256 hash power has climbed exponentially. While BTC prices tapped an ATH of $64K in mid-April on May 9th Bitcoin’s hashrate hit a lifetime high at 191.42 exahash per second (EH/s). BTC prices reached a new ATH, jumping to $69K per currency on November 10. As bitcoin prices have subsided around 26% since then, Bitcoin’s hashrate has skyrocketed to another lifetime high reaching 194.95 EH/s on December 8.
The world has changed a lot since May 9, when the last hashrate ATH occurred. BTC witnessed the greatest mining difficulty drop ever, dropping 27.94%. Since then, difficulty has increased nine more times after another drop of 4.81%. During the last four weeks, BTC’s mining difficulty slid 1.49% down and increased by 8.33% on December 11. BTC mining difficulty is now almost the same as on May 13. It has a 25 trillion difficulty parameter. Right now, the difficulty after the December 11 epoch change is 24.1 trillion which is just a hair lower than the difficulty’s ATH.
The Possibility that Thousands of Next Generation Mining Rigs are Coming Online, Hashrate Distribution Restructures
The distribution of the world’s top mining pools has changed significantly since May 9, when the hashrate high was reached. Today’s top mining pool is Antpool with 19.39% of the global hashrate or 34.6 EH/s and the second-largest BTC mining pool is F2pool with 14.16% of the hashrate or 25.27 EH/s. Foundry USA, which has 13.07% global hashpower or 23.32 EH/s has emerged as a top competitor in the last few months.
In the past quarter, the stealth and unknown hashrate mining community has been an important force in distribution of hashpower. Today unknown hashrate ranks fifth in the list of largest miners with 12.20% global hashpower and 21.77 EH/s. BTC mining is still profitable as a machine that produces 110 terahash per second (TH/s) with $0.12 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) will get around $22 per day using today’s BTC exchange rates.
There were many orders for mining equipment from enterprise mining operations during the first quarter of 2020, and second quarter of 2021. Many of which expected delivery of the top-of-the-line bitcoin mining devices by the year’s end and early 2022. Companies had ordered tens of thousands of next-generation mining rigs and it’s quite possible a fraction of these ordered machines are online now dedicating SHA256 hashrate to the network.
Do you agree with the Bitcoin Hashrate reaching a new record on December 8,? You have to think what you think of recent bitcoin mining changes. What is your take on these developments? Comment below and let us know how you feel about the subject.
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