Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Hits Record High of 114.17 Trillion Hashes

The Bitcoin network is entering a period of fierce competition as the BTC mining difficulty hits a record high of 114.17 trillion hashes, putting a lot of pressure on miners.
According to data from blockchain tracker Mempool, the Bitcoin (BTC) mining difficulty has hit a record high of 114.17 trillion (T) hashes, marking a 12.6% increase in three months since it first crossed the 100 trillion hash threshold in November 2024.

The Bitcoin mining difficulty is adjusted every 2,016 blocks (about two weeks) to maintain an average time of 10 minutes to mine a new block. As the hashrate increases, meaning more miners join the network, the difficulty is automatically raised to keep the mining pace stable. Conversely, if the hashrate decreases, the difficulty will also be adjusted down to balance the network.
Along with the increase in mining difficulty, Bitcoin's hashrate also set a new record on February 4, reaching 992.9 EH/s. The hashrate is currently at 814.8 EH/s, down about 12% from February 9 but still up nearly 50% from a year ago.

This high hashrate is largely due to Chinese miners. This country of one billion people currently controls 57.8% of the global hashrate, followed by the US with 36.9% of the market share.
The hashrate index on Bitcoin represents the overall computing power of the network, showing the ability of computers to solve complex algorithms to authenticate and encrypt data. The high hashrate shows that the transaction processing of the Bitcoin network is becoming more and more efficient.

This also means that the cost of Bitcoin mining is increasing, from which large mining companies such as Riot Platforms (RIOT), MARA and Foundry USA, continue to dominate thanks to their strong hardware and energy resources. This makes it increasingly difficult for small miners to compete and maintain profits.
The most prominent in the Bitcoin mining market today is Foundry USA, a company based in New York, leading with the world's largest Bitcoin mining pool. According to data from Hashrate Index, Foundry USA currently holds 33.1% of the market share with a hashrate of 244.6 EH/s, far surpassing the second-ranked competitor AntPool (China) when this pool only reached a power of 120.6 EH/s, accounting for 16.3% of the market share.
However, amid the increasingly competitive Bitcoin mining market and the dominance of the industry's "big guys", a single miner surprised everyone by successfully mining block 883,181 on February 10. This block contained 3,071 transactions, bringing the lucky miner a reward of 3,125 BTC, worth more than $300,000.

According to veteran miner Marshall Long, this person may have used a Bitaxe device combined with the CKPOOL mining platform to find a valid block.

Bitaxe is a compact Bitcoin mining device that can operate independently via Wi-Fi without being connected to a computer. Users can choose to mine solo to solve new block generation algorithms or join mining pools to combine computing power and increase their chances of receiving rewards.

CKPOOL (solo.ckpool) is a mining platform that allows individual miners to participate without running a full Bitcoin node. Unlike traditional pools, CKPOOL allows miners to keep all the rewards if they find a valid block. The combination of Bitaxe and CKPOOL has created an opportunity for this solo miner to be lucky enough to successfully mine a block.

In fact, it is quite rare for a solo miner to succeed in today's fiercely competitive environment when most of the new blocks are controlled by large mining companies. Furthermore, according to a report from Blockchain Council, there are currently more than 19 million Bitcoins mined and only about 1.5 million BTC left to be mined before the Bitcoin supply reaches its 21 million BTC limit. This makes the probability of a solo miner finding a valid block increasingly small.

In April 2024, a solo Bitcoin miner was lucky enough to successfully decode block 841,286, receiving a total reward of 3,125 BTC, along with 0.308 BTC in transaction fees.

BTC prices have fallen more than 4% since early February 2025 after US President Donald Trump announced new tariffs on aluminum and steel imports into the US, raising concerns about escalating trade tensions. At the time of writing, Bitcoin is hovering around $98,000, up slightly by 0.5% over the past 24 hours.