The difficulty level of Bitcoin mining, which measures the complexity of solving cryptographic puzzles in the mining process, exceeded 80 trillion on February 16th.
According to BTC.com, the hash rate of the network, representing the total computational power used by miners, reached a record high of 562.81 exahashes per second (EH/s), with the mining difficulty hitting a peak of 81.73 trillion.
The increase in Bitcoin mining difficulty has been steady since January 2023, with projections suggesting it could reach 100 trillion in the coming months. In Bitcoin’s proof-of-work system, higher difficulty means miners need more computational power and energy to find the correct hash. Over the past year, Bitcoin’s difficulty level has more than doubled.
During the automatic adjustment on February 15th, Bitcoin mining difficulty was expected to increase by around 6%, potentially pushing it above 80 trillion for the first time, according to data from BTC.com.
On February 16th, Bitcoin maintained a value of $52,000 at the start of Wall Street trading, boosted by positive news about exceeding expectations in the latest macroeconomic data from the United States.