By the end of January 2021, Bitcoin's network mining difficulty (how hard it is to earn block rewards) was higher than at any point in the life of the crypto protocol. Bitcoin currently has a mining difficulty of $20.8 trillion, and despite the high difficulty factor, Bitcoin miners continue to keep the network's hash rate running high.

Bitcoin difficulty hits 20.82 trillion

The price of Bitcoin (BTC) is higher than ever, and despite a temporary dip below $30,000 on Jan. 21, the crypto asset has managed to stay above that range. This makes it a profit point per BTC current price for many ASIC mining machines, including older generation mining rigs.

Nonetheless, the current Bitcoin (BTC) mining difficulty is the highest it has been in the past twelve years. Difficulty is essentially how hard it is for a miner to mine a BTC block or basically not find a hash for a given target.

The higher the difficulty, the harder it is for all mining participants to try to find a bitcoin block on any given day. At the time of publication, public data shows that the difficulty of the BTC chain is approximately 20,823,531,150,111 or 20.82T.

Small Difficulty Jump Expected in Less Than Two Weeks, Bitcoin Hashrate Surpasses 150 Exahash

There are about 22 mining pools dedicated to SHA256 hashrate on the BTC chain, usually only about 18 for most months of last year. Currently, these pools keep the BTC hash rate above the 150 exahash per second (eH/s) region.

For the past two months, BTC’s hash rate has remained between 140 and 165 EH/s. At the current rate, it appears that the difficulty will jump to +0.11% to 20.85T in only 12 days.

Currently, the top five pools currently mining BTC include F2pool (23 EH/s), Poolin (19.2 EH/s), Binance Pool (17.1 EH/s), Btc.com (16.5 EH/s) and Antpool (12.4 ) EH/s). Today, these top five mining pools account for 61.45% of the entire SHA256 hashrate, while 17 pools account for 38.55% of the remaining hashrate.

The ever-increasing computing power and mining difficulty of the entire network show that miners are willing and are continuing to invest more resources to protect and invest in the Bitcoin network. Glassnode data shows that despite the recent drop in bitcoin prices, addresses holding more than 1,000 bitcoins continue to rise and show no signs of stopping. Since December 2020, the number of addresses has grown by 4%. The Miners Position Index (MPI) shows that the miners responsible for the drop have completed their sell-off.

However, the difficulty of mining has hit a new high, which also means that it is becoming more and more difficult for small retail miners to compete with large mines. The low computing power of a single device has made it difficult to obtain block rewards in the Bitcoin network, and it is easy to increase in extreme market conditions and computing power. In the process of being shuffled out, more and more miners choose to join the mining pool.

Although the price of Bitcoin fluctuates violently, the market still maintains an optimistic attitude. Industry insiders believe that the increase in mining difficulty will result in the closure of some small mines, which will lead to a decrease in the hash rate, and the difficulty of mining will also be adjusted accordingly. In addition, there is a large amount of institutional funds behind this year's market, which may provide new support for the value of Bitcoin.