Analysts are beginning to view this as the start of a new season in bitcoin mining. As miners in North America ramp up production ahead of the colder months, the difficulty of mining Bitcoin (BTC), is expected to rise by approximately 9%.
It will be the largest uptick since August 2021 when miners started to return online in China after the industry was outlawed. China was the home of 44% of all mining activity at that time.
The difficulty of Bitcoin adjusts automatically to reduce the time it takes to mine a block. This depends on how much computing power is available on the network. The difficulty level drops as the hashrate (a measure of computing power) increases.
The highest rise in network difficulties this year was in January (9.32%).
According to estimates by Bitrawr and Coinwarz, the metric will increase by approximately 9% to reach around 31, trillion. According to data from mining pool BTC.com, this is very close to the all-time record of 31,25 trillion set on May 5.
CoinDesk analysts spoke out to confirm that the increase in difficulty and hashrate is due to more machines and the diminishing heatwave impact.
Ethan Vera is chief operating officer of Luxor Technologies, a mining services company. He stated that the boom in post-summer hashrate results from more efficient hardware being delivered, lower summer temperatures in the U.S., and older-generation machines being shipped to low-cost areas.
The hashrate of Bitcoin network fell in middle-July, as miners in North America slowed down due to heat waves that had swept across the continent. Mining rigs require a lot of energy to run their calculations. Additionally, they produce heat that causes companies to need more energy to cool them.
In the same month, new technology was deployed at multiple facilities simultaneously. “Majesty has increased from 210 EH/s (7.6%) to 226 EH/s in the last month. This has allowed bitcoin’s average seven-day hashrate to rise from 210 EH/s (30.6%) to 226 EH/s (42.2%). This is due to miners plugging new models like the Antminer S19 XP which miners started receiving in batches in July,” stated Colin Harper, head research and content at Luxor Technologies.
