Mining difficulty for Bitcoin has risen to 148.2 trillion in the latest 2025 difficulty reset, the highest level since miners' and adversarial network forces collided in earnest. That is a significant jump in general, as the protocol is setting up for one more leg higher into early 2026. What is also increasing, and steadily rising through 2025, is the difficulty of inserting a new block into the Bitcoin ledger. At the beginning of the year, it was substantially below 110 trillion and rose in tandem with the increasing demand for mining hash power. In competitive situations, some miners increased production to afford ... (full story)