23 trillion times higher than when it was born, the difficulty of Bitcoin mining has reached a new level

The reason is said to be because many newcomers to Bitcoin mining cause the difficulty to continue to be adjusted upwards.

Bitcoin mining difficulty just hit an all-time high, up nearly 6% from the last correction.

“Difficulty” here refers to the resources required to mine bitcoin (BTC). This difficulty goes up or down depending on the total hashrate of the Bitcoin network for a certain period of time (the more participants, the higher the difficulty). Bitcoin is programmed to adjust the difficulty every 2,016 blocks, or 2 weeks, to ensure each new block is mined at a steady rate.

If we consider the difficulty of mining Bitcoin when this digital currency was born as 1, after this adjustment, that difficulty has risen to 23.1 trillion, according to CoinDesk data. BTC.com determined that the difficulty of mining Bitcoin has increased by nearly 6% from 21.8 trillion in the most recent upward correction.

Bitcoin price skyrocketed, more and more people joined Bitcoin mining, making the difficulty continue to increase.

The reason the difficulty is adjusted higher this time is because tens of thousands of new miners have joined the Bitcoin mining industry, according to Compass CEO Whit Gibbs. “The difficulty adjustment this time was foretold. I believe it is just the beginning of further growth this year and 2022 when the previously delayed Bitcoin miner orders are delivered again. The difficulty will definitely increase, in tandem with the Bitcoin price,” Gibb said.

As of the afternoon of April 2, Bitcoin price was at $59,850/BTC while the market capitalization reached $1.12 trillion. So far, Northern Data AG (Frankfurt, Germany) – a company specializing in providing supercomputing solutions and data centers – is considered the largest Bitcoin mining company in the world. This company started Bitcoin mining activities in 2009, then opened the mining operation service to partners.

To “mine” Bitcoin, people will use computers, usually specialized rigs connected to the cryptocurrency network. Their job is to verify transactions made by the sender or receiver of Bitcoin.

This process involves decrypting ciphers, which act as a barrier to ensure no one can fraudulently edit the global ledger that records all transactions. As a reward, miners will receive a small amount of Bitcoin.

Accelerating speed and increasing profits, they often connect large numbers of mining computers into a single network. This process consumes a lot of power because the computers will have to work continuously to solve the aforementioned puzzles. According to the Cambridge Bitcoin Power Consumption Index (CBECI) compiled by researchers from the University of Cambridge (UK), the total energy consumption of bitcoin mining this year could reach 128 billion kWh. This represents 0.6% of the world’s total electricity production.