Bitcoin mining difficulty surpasses 80 trillion ahead of halving

Bitcoin mining difficulty, which measures how difficult it is to solve the complex cryptographic puzzles used in the mining process, passed 80 trillion on Friday, Feb. 16.

The network’s hash rate, which measures the total computational power used by miners, reached 562.81 exahashes per second (EH/s), and the mining difficulty hit a record 81.73 trillion, according to BTC.com. Bitcoin BTC

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mining difficulty has steadily risen since January 2023 and is expected to reach 100 trillion in the next few months.

In Bitcoin’s proof-of-work consensus mechanism, a higher difficulty means miners require more computational power and energy to find the correct hash. In the last year, Bitcoin’s difficulty level has more than doubled.