Bitcoin (BTC) Hashrate Peaks to New Record Amidst Increasing Profitability
Over the weekend, BTC mining posted another significant spike in activity.
Over the weekend, BTC mining posted another significant spike in activity.
Bitcoin (BTC) posted another mining record, just days after breaking to an all-time high for hashing activity. Based on stats, BTC mining reached a peak above 68 EH/s on Saturday, breaking the previous record of 64 EH/s.
The increased mining activity follows the discovery that as much as 87% of all mining farms are in China. Currently, the rainy season provides extra electricity, and with the introduction of more efficient mining rigs, mining is lucrative again. Even with three significant spikes in difficulty in the past three months, miners are adding more power to the network. Additionally, there are more than 10,000 active Bitcoin nodes to relay the transactions.
A new mining rig using cheap electricity could easily bring an income of close to $10,000 per year, encouraging a new race to secure block rewards.
Increased mining, however, does not make sending BTC more efficient or cheaper. Fees for BTC have increased to around $2.41 for inclusion into the next block. There are also more than 15,000 pending transactions, as traders still move their holdings between exchanges.
BTC mining has picked up from around 46 EH/s at the beginning of June. The surge in mining has also raised the difficulty by 24% in the last three months, meaning that block discovery is now an even more competitive game. Still, BTC.com is leading in block discovery, finding more than 25% of all blocks. A handful of leading pools is usually discovering more than 50% of all blocks, outcompeting smaller rivals.
BTC mining is one of the positive indicators, as the market prices are still trying to prove their sustainability. Address activity also peaked during the weekend, and fell in the past day, indicating that network activity is, for now, related mostly to the need to move coins for trading and arbitrage.
As a leading coin, BTC is still at the top of both mining and trading activity. More than 32% of all trading is happening in the BTC markets, and the leading coin dominates more than 61.4% of the market capitalization of all digital assets.