Even as the world’s largest digital currency by market capitalization Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) continues to reel under pressure since Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's comments about increasing interest rates further to tame rising inflation, on-chain data illustrates that difficulty and hash rate is rapidly increasing, far from capitulating.
Bitcoin's market valuation has decreased from $1.27 trillion in November 2021 to under $383 billion currently.
In the last week, Bitcoin has nose-dived by nearly 7%.
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Miners undeterred despite slump BTC/USD is not deterring miners, who have just come out of their own multi-month capitulation phase, despite the digital currency being down about 7% in a week.
As August comes to an end, fundamental indicators are firmly in "up only" mode as hardware and competition have returned to the network.
This is encapsulated by difficulty, which is expected to rise by an estimated 6.8% next week.
The level of competition among miners for block subsidies is one aspect of difficulty that is measured.
According to statistics from the on-chain monitoring portal BTC.com, this will be the biggest upward difficulty adjustment since January of this year, according to statistics.
Additionally, if the difficulty rises by 6.8% as expected, it would have escalated to previously unheard-of levels.
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Difficulty may reach ATH in a few days: Blocksbridge Bitcoin mining consultancy firm Blocksbridge, in its latest report, stated, “We may see a difficulty jump doozy enough to set a new (or close to new) ATH in a few days.”
All network users were finding the current situation challenging, and owners of older equipment were feeling the squeeze as a result of falling spot prices and a corresponding drop in the value of block subsidies and fees in comparison to costs like power, the report further added.
Blocksbridge said the bear market is crashing those with inefficient mining fleets.
According to the tracking site MiningPoolStats, the hash rate stood at 246 exahashes per second (EH/s) as of August 22.
This is down from all-time highs of 251 EH/s recorded in late April.
The hash rate is always an estimate, and changes in its value do not always indicate a change in miner activity.
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