Bitcoin mining difficulty rebounds 15% as US miners recover from winter outages

Bitcoin’s mining trouble jumped astir 15% to 144.4 trillion connected Feb. 20, according to CoinWarz data, reversing an 11% driblet earlier this period that marked the sharpest diminution since China’s 2021 mining ban.

The earlier diminution followed a crisp driblet successful hash complaint aft terrible wintertime storms swept crossed overmuch of the United States, disrupting powerfulness grids and forcing miners offline. In precocious January, Foundry USA, the largest mining excavation by hash rate, concisely saw its computing powerfulness autumn to astir 198 exahashes per 2nd from astir 400 EH/s, earlier recovering.

Bitcoin Difficulty Chart. Source: CoinWarz

Hash complaint measures the full computing powerfulness securing the network, portion mining trouble adjusts each 2,016 blocks, astir each 2 weeks, to support artifact accumulation adjacent its 10-minute target.

As US miners restored operations aft the storm, hash complaint rebounded, prompting the latest upward trouble adjustment.

While higher trouble strengthens Bitcoin’s (BTC) web security, it besides raises the computational effort required to gain artifact rewards, tightening margins for miners already facing outgo pressures.

Related: Thirteen years aft the archetypal halving, Bitcoin mining looks precise antithetic successful 2025

US miners monetize grid curtailments during wintertime storm

Although January’s wintertime tempest forced immoderate US Bitcoin miners offline, it didn’t needfully erase revenue. Many enactment successful request effect programs oregon clasp flexible powerfulness contracts, allowing them to intermission mining and sell energy backmost to the grid erstwhile prices spike.

“In January, our powerfulness infrastructure highlighted the flexibility of our operating model,” said Bruce Rodgers, president and CEO of Bitcoin miner LM Funding America.

According to a February report, the institution curtailed operations during Winter Storm Fern and redirected contracted powerfulness to the grid, generating much than a 4th of its emblematic quarterly vigor and curtailment gross implicit a azygous weekend.

Top Bitcoin mining stocks by marketplace cap. Source: Bitcoinminingstock.io

Canaan Inc., a Singapore-based mining hardware shaper with US operations, besides said successful its January accumulation update that its US mining activities participated successful powerfulness curtailments successful storm-affected regions done coordination with tract partners to assistance equilibrium grid demand.

Since China’s 2021 mining crackdown, the United States has go the world’s largest Bitcoin-mining hub, hosting large operations successful crypto-friendly states specified arsenic Texas and Georgia. 

According to data from Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, the US accounts for implicit one-third of planetary Bitcoin hash rate.

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