Bitcoin network’s processing power has continued its upward trend and on February 15^th, 2022, it recorded a new all-time high of 249 exahashper second (EH/s). This latest ATH increased the mining difficulty of the network. On Thursday morning, the difficulty had increased by 4.78%, which brought it to a value of 27.97 trillion. Since November 28^th, 2021, there has been an increase in the mining difficulty of the network for the sixth consecutive time. This means that it has become 23.34% harder for bitcoin miners to mine the block rewards. After hitting a new all-time high value on Tuesday, the hash rate of the Bitcoin network had declined to 212.21 EH/s.

The new ATH that was recorded on Tuesday came three days after the previous high of 246 EH/s on February 12^th. This means that the mining difficulty will now remain at 27.97 trillion for the next thirteen days. This is significantly higher than the low difficulty value that had been recorded on July 17^th, 2021, almost seven months ago. The Bitcoin network difficulty at that time had been around 13.67 trillion because it had decreased four times in a row. The largest decrease had been recorded on July 3^rd, 2021 in its history.

Since July 17^th, there have been 16 changes that were recorded to the difficulty adjustment algorithm (DAA) and 15 of these have led to an increase. In the duration of seven months, the last decrease had been recorded on November 28^th last year, when it had declined by 1.49%. The jump from the difficulty level of 13.67 trillion to 27.97 trillion in seven months is an increase of 104.60%. 215 days ago, the hashratehad been half of its value today and stood at 97.87 EH/s. With miners recording an all-time high, Foundry USA has been the top mining pool in the last three days.

Its share of global hashrate has been about 15.59%, which is 33.62 EH/s. F2pool has been the second-largest miner, as its contribution has been about 14.76%, which makes it 31.83 EH/s. The other mining pools that contribute to the global hashrate after these two are Antpool, SBI Crypto, Slushpool, Binance Pool, Luxor, Poolin, Btc.com and Viabtc. A total of 12 entities have dedicated their hashrate to the Bitcoin network and 11 of these are well-known mining pools. However, there are also stealth miners and unknowns, but they are contributing the least amount of global hashrate, which is around 0.89% i.e. 1.79 EH/s.

At the time of writing, the global hashrate continues to coast along the 200 EH/s mark. Therefore, it is predicted that the next adjustment that will be made to the difficulty adjustment algorithm (DAA) will be another increase. Even though there is a possibility that this estimate could change, but there is a good chance that it will go up. The difficulty is expected to climb by 0.04%, which means it will go from 27.97 trillion to a value of 27.98 trillion, making it more difficult for people to mine the world’s top cryptocurrency.