Bitcoin network mining difficulty. An indicator that tracks the relative challenge of adding new blocks to Bitcoin ($BTC) ledger has fallen about 11.16% in the past 24 hours, the worst decline in a single correction period since China banned crypto mining in 2021.
According to data from CoinWarz, Bitcoin mining difficulty is 125.86 T and took effect at block 935,429. The average block time was over 11 minutes, exceeding the goal of 10 minutes.
According to CoinWarz, the difficulty is expected to drop again by around 10.4% to 112.7T in the next adjustment on February 23rd.
Bitcoin network mining difficulty from 2014 to 2026. source: coin wars
According to historical data from CoinWarz, China announced a ban on crypto mining and began cracking down on digital assets in May 2021, resulting in several downward revisions to the difficulty level from May to July 2021, ranging from 12.6% to 27.9%.
This significant downward revision comes amid a broader downturn in the crypto market, with Bitcoin prices plummeting more than 50% from an all-time high of over $125,000 to a low of $60,000, and winter storms in the United States caused temporary downtime for miners.
Related: Possibility of Bitcoin “miner outflow” boosting $BTC Prices below $60,000
Winter Storm Fern hits the US, causing miner hashrate to drop
A severe winter storm hit the United States in January, impacting 34 states across 2,000 square miles with snow, ice, and freezing temperatures, disrupting power infrastructure.
During Winter Storm Fern, large areas of the United States experienced power outages and service disruptions. sauce: accuweather
The power grid disruption caused US-based Bitcoin miners to temporarily reduce their energy usage and halt operations, reducing the network’s total hashrate, the amount of computing power miners spend to secure the Bitcoin protocol.
Foundry USA, a US-based mining pool and the world’s largest mining pool by hashrate, temporarily lost about 60% of its hashing power during Winter Storm Fern.
The mining pool’s total hashpower dropped from nearly 400 exahashes per second (EH/s) to around 198 EH/s in response to the storm.
Bitcoin mining pool market share. sauce: hash rate index
According to the Hashrate Index, Foundry USA’s hashrate has rebounded to over 354 EH/s, the mining pool’s hashpower at the time of writing, and still commands 29.47% of the market share.
However, the Bitcoin network’s total hashrate fell to a four-month low in January as crypto market conditions worsened and miners moved their operations to AI data centers and other high-performance computing.
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