On Bitcoin’s 16th Birthday, Difficulty and Hashrate Reach All-Time Highs

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty reached a new all-time high on the 16th anniversary of the first cryptocurrency’s genesis block.

Bitcoin difficulty was 109.78 trillion on Jan. 3, according to CoinWarz data. The last difficulty adjustment was on Dec. 29.

That’s up 24% in the past 90 days and about 52% since the beginning of 2024.

An increase in mining difficulty means miners have to increase their efficiency, investing more in equipment and energy in order to bring more computing power to bear to keep their revenue up. This increases the hash rate, which also hit an all-time high this week. And a higher hash rate leads, in turn, to a more secure network.

Difficulty is a measure of how hard it is to solve the cryptographic puzzles required to mine a block on the Bitcoin blockchain. It resets every two weeks based on the amount of computing power being thrown into solving those puzzles and earning the block reward of 3.125 bitcoins, currently worth about $307,000.

It is currently expected to rise again at the next adjustment on Jan.12, CoinWarz said, projecting a difficulty of 111.45 trillion, up 1.5%.

Hashrate Also at ATH

That’s not the only milestone. On Jan. 2, the bitcoin hashrate spiked to an all-time high of 1,000.8 exahashes per second (EH/s), or one zetahash of one quintillion H/s, according to CoinWarz. It has since retreated to about 772 EH/s.

That’s up from 530 EH/s on Jan. 1, 2024, according to CoinWarz.

The hash rate is a measure of how much computing power miners are devoting to mining bitcoin blocks. A higher hashrate equates to a more secure blockchain.

Satoshi’s Dream

Bitcoin’s 16th anniversary is a seminal one, with BTC’s price more than doubling from about $43,500 Jan.1 to about $95,800 on Dec. 31 2024. Bitcoin hit an all time high of $108,135 on Dec. 17.

Bitcoin was created by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto as a form of peer-to-peer payment that could bypass banks and other financial middlemen.

Over its lifetime, bitcoin has created almost $2 trillion in wealth, and unleashed the floodgates of cryptocurrencies, with a combined market capitalization of $3.5 trillion.