Headline: Bitcoin mining difficulty jumps 15% to 144.4T — biggest surge since 2021, despite price slump Bitcoin’s mining difficulty has climbed 15% to 144.4 trillion (T), marking the largest percentage increase since the upheaval in 2021 following China’s mining ban. That episode also saw a sharp readjustment as the network recovered, including a 22% upward move when operations re-stabilized. What the change means - Difficulty is the network’s automatic throttle on how hard it is to mine a block. It recalibrates every 2,016 blocks (roughly every two weeks) to keep block times near 10 minutes regardless of changes in total computing power (hashrate). - This recent 15% rise follows a roughly 12% decline in difficulty earlier in the cycle, which was triggered by a drop in hashrate after a severe U.S. winter storm forced some major miners to scale back. Hashrate and price context - Hashrate and price have swung together this cycle. In October, when Bitcoin hit an all-time high near $126,500, network hashrate peaked around 1.1 zettahash per second (ZH/s). By February, as BTC slid to about $60,000, hashrate dipped to roughly 826 exahash/s (EH/s). Since then the hashrate has recovered to about 1 ZH/s, while BTC has staged a partial rebound to around $67,000. Profitability squeeze, but big players hold steady - Despite the recovering hashrate, miners are operating under tight margins: hashprice — the estimated daily revenue per unit of hashrate — remains at multi-year lows (about $23.9 per PH/s). That compresses profitability for many operators. - Well-capitalized miners with access to cheap energy are weathering the squeeze and continuing to mine aggressively. For example, mining operations tied to the United Arab Emirates are reportedly sitting on roughly $344 million in unrealized profit, illustrating how low-cost production can sustain activity even when revenues are depressed. An extra headwind: miners pivoting to AI - Another driver behind recent hashrate weakness is strategic reallocation by some publicly traded miners toward AI and high-performance computing (HPC) data centers. Bitfarms recently rebranded to de-emphasize “bitcoin” as it shifts focus toward AI infrastructure, and activist investor Starboard has pushed Riot Platforms to expand into AI data-center operations. What to watch next - The difficulty surge makes mining tougher for smaller or higher-cost operators, favoring large, efficient players and potentially accelerating consolidation. Meanwhile, continued corporate pivots into AI and persistent low hashprices could limit how much hashrate grows even if BTC prices recover. Bottom line: the network is proving resilient—difficulty is rising and hashrate is rebounding—but profitability pressures and strategic pivots to AI are reshaping the mining landscape. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news

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