Bitcoin’s mining difficulty climbed to 144.4 trillion after January storms briefly slashed hash rate, while some US miners offset downtime by selling electricity back to the grid.
Bitcoin’s mining difficulty jumped about 15% to 144.4 trillion on Feb. 20, according to CoinWarz data, reversing an 11% drop earlier this month that marked the sharpest decline since China’s 2021 mining ban.
The earlier decline followed a sharp drop in hash rate after severe winter storms swept across much of the United States, disrupting power grids and forcing miners offline. In late January, Foundry USA, the largest mining pool by hash rate, briefly saw its computing power fall to about 198 exahashes per second from nearly 400 EH/s, before recovering.
Hash rate measures the total computing power securing the network, while mining difficulty adjusts every 2,016 blocks, about every two weeks, to keep block production near its 10-minute target.
