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. Bitcoin miners have increased their processing power a great deal despite the fact that mining bitcoin is 8.33% harder to mine since December 11.
Bitcoin Hashrate hits 194 Exahash per second on December 8th, mining difficulty increases by more than 8% 3 days later
Bitcoin prices hit a few all-time highs in 2021, breaking records from previous years. Likewise, Bitcoin’s hashrate also hit record highs twice this year as SHA256 hash power increased exponentially. As BTC prices hit an ATH of $ 64,000 in mid-April on May 9, Bitcoin’s hashrate hit a lifetime high of 191.42 exahash per second (EH / s). BTC prices hit another ATH again on November 10, rising to $ 69,000 per coin. While bitcoin prices have fallen by around 26% since then, Bitcoin’s hashrate has skyrocketed to another lifetime high of 194.95 EH / s on December 8.
Things have changed a great deal since the last hashrate ATH on May 9, as BTC saw the largest mining difficulty drop in its lifetime dipping 27.94%. After another 4.81% drop, the difficulty has increased nine times in a row since then. During the last four weeks, BTC’s mining difficulty slid 1.49% down and increased by 8.33% on December 11. In terms of mining difficulty, it is almost as hard to mine BTC as it was on May 13, with 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.
Changes in hashrate distribution, possibility of putting online thousands of new generation mining platforms
Another visible change from the May 9 hashrate peak is that major mining pools have dramatically altered the cast. The first mining pool today is Antpool with 19.39% of the world 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 has been a new top contender in recent months, taking third place on December 12, 2021, with 13.07% of global hash power or 23.32 PE / s.
During the last quarter of the year, unknown hashrate or stealth miners have been a prominent force in hash power distribution. Today, unknown hashrate is recorded as the fifth-largest mining entity with 12.20% of the global hashpower or 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.
During the last quarter of 2020 and the first two quarters of 2021, many orders for mining rigs were placed by the mining operations of the companies. Many of them expected delivery of the high-end bitcoin mining devices by the end of the year and early 2022. The companies had ordered tens of thousands of next-gen mining rigs and it is quite possible that a fraction of these ordered machines are online now. dedicate the SHA256 hash to the network.
