Bitcoin mining has never been harder, according to the latest data. The network’s mining difficulty hit a new all-time high of 37.59 trillion hashes after posting a rare increase of over 10% on January 15, the highest leap since last November—the only time in 2022 when mining difficulty increased by a double-digit percentage. In addition to a high mining difficulty, data from CoinWarz shows that Bitcoin’s hash rate, best understood as the computational power of the network, has also been steadily climbing over the last three years, despite briefly plunging after Terra collapsed in May 2021. On January 6, 2023, ... (full story)