Bitcoin mining difficulty reached a new all-time high of 134.7 trillion on Friday, surpassing the previous high set in August. This increase occurred despite earlier projections anticipating a decrease in network difficulty.
According to CryptoQuant, Bitcoin’s hashrate, which measures the total number of hashes per second from all miners, has decreased to 967 billion hashes per second. This is a reduction from the all-time high of over 1 trillion hashes per second recorded on August 4.
The rising difficulty has intensified the competitive landscape for large mining firms, compressing their profit margins. The escalating computing power required to mine blocks has also fueled concerns about the centralization of Bitcoin mining, potentially leading to the dominance of large corporations and mining pools due to the increasing costs involved.
Despite the growing influence of large mining entities, individual or “solo” miners are still managing to mine blocks and claim the block reward, which currently stands at 3.125 BTC, valued at over $344,000.
In July and August, three solo miners successfully added blocks to the Bitcoin ledger and claimed the block reward. On July 3, one miner added block 903,883, earning nearly $350,000, including block subsidy rewards and priority fees. Another solo miner added block 907,283 on July 26, claiming over $373,000 in rewards based on Bitcoin prices at the time. On August 17, a third solo miner mined block 910,440, securing $373,000 in block subsidy rewards and network fees.
