Bitcoin miners got crushed in 2022. What seemed like a year of sufficient capital for expansion, high energy prices, increasing competition, and a bear market knocked several mining giants off.
After the winter slumber, Bitcoin miners are back again as mining difficulty noted over a 10% surge from 34.09 trillion to 37.59 trillion, according to data compiled by BTC.com
Following the development, a leading player in the space, f2pool tweeted,
“Bitcoin mining difficulty increased by 10.26%, to an ATH! In this 2-week cycle, If BTC can go up above $23,000, machines that are more efficient than 40W/T can be running with profits at the electricity of $0.08/kWh.”
The figure that determines how difficult it is to mine a Bitcoin block comes amidst a bullish reversal in the crypto asset’s price action.
Currently trading at $21,175, Bitcoin managed to wipe out losses from the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire two months back. The next difficulty change is expected to take place in two weeks, which could see a minor decline of 0.02%, at least for now.
Meanwhile, in just two weeks into the year, Bitcoin’s mining hash set two fresh highs even as bankrupt miner Core Scientific turned off 9,000 ASICs in December.
This trend could potentially demonstrate hash moving from weak hands to strong hands. At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s hash rate is hovering near 271.86 EH/s.
In terms of mining pool distribution, Foundry USA commands the highest share with 35.5%, followed by AntPool with 20.9%, Binance Pool with 12.3%, and f2pool with 10.4%, among others, respectively.
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