Bitcoin network difficulty reaches all-time high as miners pursue 2M BTC

Bitcoin’s hash rate maintained a stronghold throughout the year as it compliments the new ATH for BTC network difficulty.

Just when the Bitcoin (BTC) miners helped release the 19th millionth BTC in circulation on Friday, the BTC network’s mining difficulty reciprocated by reaching an all-time high of 28.587 trillion.

Bitcoin’s network difficulty correlates to the computational power required to mine BTC blocks, which currently demands an estimated hash rate of 201.84 exahash per second (EH/s), according to data from Blockchain.com.

Bitcoin network difficulty. Source: Blockchain.com

Supporting the spike in the network difficulty, Bitcoin’s hash rate maintained a stronghold throughout the year while breaking into an all-time high of 248.11 EH/s on Feb. 13.

Bitcoin hash rate over the past three years. Source: Blockchain.com

A higher hash rate ensures resilience against double-spending attacks, which is the process of reversing BTC transactions over the blockchain by contributing to at least 51% of the Bitcoin hash rate.

Back on Mar. 4, roughly a month before reaching an all-time high, the BTC network difficulty experienced a slight decline from 27.96 trillion to 27.55 trillion, which eventually fell down to 27.45 trillion until Mar. 30. Prior to that, the resilient Bitcoin network grew consistently since July 2021.

With just 2 million BTC left to mine as rewards and an influx of Bitcoin miners from across the world, the BTC network is expected to increasingly grow stronger as it supports the thriving community.

On Mar. 30, a Terra wallet belonging to LFG (Luna Foundation Guard) amassed $139 million in BTC, bringing its total coffers up to 31,000 BTC or $1.47 billion.