Assessing Bitcoin’s hashrate and network difficulties as BTC drops

• Bitcoin’s hash rate and network difficulty may increase from their ATHs.
• Miners’ fees have improved, but total earnings remained underwater at press time.

Bitcoins [BTC] Year-to-date (YTD) performance of over 70% has been one of the best in history, considering the number of months it took to reach landmark. But unbeknownst to many, the price increase also affected the mining industry, which faced many challenges in the past year.

How much is 1,10,100 BTCs worth today?

Stifel, a Canadian investment firm, provided one update on the matter in its March 20 blockchain industry update. According to the company, the first three months of the year have influenced an increase in the hash price. The hash price gives an indication of the hardware miners are using. It also provides an overview of the revenue generated on a per terahash basis.

More competition in block production

Although the average hash price fell by 7% on a month-to-month (MoM) basis, it can still keep miners afloat.

Furthermore, the increase in BTC’s price has also been followed by ATH records for Bitcoin hashrate and network difficulties. However, Stifel noted that network difficulty could increase another 5.5% by March 23.

The network difficulties measures how time-consuming and challenging it is to find the correct hash for each block. At press time, the metric was 43.55 Target (T). This estimate suggested that discovery of new Bitcoin blocks would be highly competitive as the day progresses.

It was also the same estimate for the hashrate as the organization firmly stated that they expected growth in that regard. As of the time Stifel published its report, the Bitcoin hash rate was 326 Exahash per second (EH/s). However, the firm gave its reason, saying:

“We expect continued growth to the overall network hash rate in the near term as newer generation machine shipments are installed and brought online.”

The hash rate describes the amount of processing and computing power per second used to verify transactions and secure the Bitcoin network. Interestingly, it may seem that Stifel was right after all. This was because Glassnode’s data at press time showed that hashrate had increased to 348 EH/s.

Source: Glassnode

Thanks to BTC, fees have become…

Thus, the data above means that more equipment has been deployed to create new blocks. The release of Stifel also seemed to confirm this sentiment. First, Stifel reported that mining companies HIVE-N and ARBK-N have both improved their mining operations. And this was due to newly installed mining machines and reduced power costs.

Read Bitcoins [BTC] Price prediction 2023-2024

Although the total miner earnings were still in a difficult phase, the fees generated have been able to fill up. At the time of writing, the miners’ revenue generated through fees increased by 4.916%. This explains that newly minted coins have made a profit for the operators.

Source: Glassnode

However, BTC has fallen from $28.00. But nevertheless, this may not be enough to stop the respite the mining industry is experiencing. At the same time, it provides no assurance of improved conditions.