A recent report shows that the difficulty level of Bitcoin (BTC) mining increased on Friday. The bitcoin difficulty level rose to 7.56% hitting an all-time high. It also shows that miners are using more computing power to mine a BTC.
According to the report, the difficulty rate came at 46.8 trillion at block height 7,82,208 on Friday. Mining difficulty shows the computational power required to source a BTC.
With the rise in the difficulty level of bitcoin, the Bitcoin mining companies are pushing themselves to increase the hash rates. As a result, hashrate reached an all-time high of 395.15 exhashes per second on Thursday.
If Bitcoin’s hash rate decreases, fewer machines would be tasked with maintaining network security. For those who own Bitcoin, this might be bad news as it would make it simpler for cybercriminals to assault and steal it.
When a currency is not secure, crypto exchanges may choose to halt trading or remove the currency entirely to protect their users. An increased hash rate is considered as a good sign because it means that more computers are working to secure the network and make it more difficult for cybercriminals to attack. There are additional safeguards in place to defend against assaults, so it’s not the only element that defines how secure a network is.
However, the hashrates not only depend on technical aspects but also depend on various other things like geographical constraints and climatic factors. Summer heat waves or winter storms could hamper the hash rate growth as we have witnessed in the Riot Platforms Inc. case in December 2022.
In the Riot Platforms Inc. case, a severe winter storm hit the building of the company and affected the company’s goal to achieve a hash rate capacity of 12.5 EH/s. If a miner sees a sudden decrease in the hash rate growth could pose an ultimate challenge for the company. It could halt trading or delist a coin to protect its customer’s interests.
Before this incident, on 1 January 2023, bitcoin had witnessed a difficulty level of 39.35 trillion. The mining difficulty level has been on the rise since December 2022. This news certainly provided a setback to bitcoin miners as they now will require more machines, electricity, and other related equipment.
