The bitcoin price has been in a slight downward trend for about two weeks now. After hitting a high of around $25,000, the price is down about 10% at the time of writing. Despite this, both the hashrate and the mining difficulty of the Bitcoin (BTC) network a new one all time high reaches.
Bitcoin hash rate and difficulty
The mining hash rate is an indicator that measures the total amount of computing power connected to Bitcoin’s network. The value is measured in terahashes per second (TH/s). When the hash rate rises, it means that Bitcoin miners bring more and/or more efficient machines to the network. Such a trend also shows that the current Bitcoin blockchain is attractive to miners.
On the other hand, the falling value of the indicator suggests that some miners are unplugging their machines, suggesting that they do not consider it profitable enough to mine BTC.
The difficulty level is a built-in concept that determines how difficult it is for miners to add a new block to the blockchain. This difficulty is adjusted every 20,016 blocks, which is equivalent to about two weeks, according to the network’s hash rate. With this, the network aims to keep the block production speed constant at around ten minutes.
New all time highs
Data from Blockchain.com clearly shows that the total hash rate has risen to a new all-time high of almost 330 TH/s. In addition, on the last update on February 25, the difficulty level increased by 9.95% to a new high of 43.05 T, according to data from BTC.com.
The hash rate graph shows that the total computing power of the network saw a sharp decline before recently rising to a new all-time high. This has everything to do with the increase in difficulty: when miners find it more difficult to mine, they earn less income. That’s why some small miners who made low profits start unheading their machines when the difficulty gets that high.
The rise in computing power may be a sign that the bigger players in the mining industry are still very much bullish are about the future of Bitcoin.