Bitcoin’s mining difficulty has set a new record high, surpassing 72 trillion for the first time in the last adjustment this year.
The network difficulty went up by 6.98% on Dec. 23 at block height 822,528 in yet another sign that mining companies worldwide are racing to grab as many rewards as possible before Halving, which is four months away.
Bitcoin’s mining difficulty previously had five upward adjustments in a row before dipping slightly earlier this month.
The recent surge of bitcoin transaction fees has likely prompted more operators to speed up their miner deployments, pushing bitcoin’s seven-day moving hashrate to exceed 525 EH/s.
Indeed, bitcoin miner operators have made 5,917 BTC in block rewards solely from transaction fees month-to-date, amounting to about $257 million.
As a result of the record difficulty, bitcoin’s hashprice has declined to $100/PH/s after briefly setting yearly highs over $130/PH/s over the past week.
Screenshot via Mempool.space