Mining Difficulty Rises 6.81% as Bitcoin Hashrate Hits Record High

Bitcoin’s hashrate reached a lifetime peak on April 5, climbing to 883 exahash per second (EH/s), a gain of approximately 21 EH/s compared to the previous record set on March 28.

Bitcoin Miners Push Limits as Difficulty Hits 121.51 Trillion and Hashrate Peaks

At press time, the Bitcoin network’s computing capacity is gliding at 876.24 EH/s, slightly below its recent peak. This record-setting hashrate arrives as mining difficulty edged up by 6.81%, raising the bar for miners attempting to validate new blocks. The current spot hashprice—the projected daily return for 1 petahash per second (PH/s) of SHA256 hashpower—stands at $46.16 per PH/s. The hashprice has fallen 11.15% since March 5.

At this pace, the network needs to add just 117 EH/s to cross the threshold of 1 zettahash per second (ZH/s), a milestone that appears likely to be reached in 2025. Currently, 883 EH/s translates to 883 quintillion hashes per second (H/s), or 0.883 ZH/s. This record-setting computational high coincides with a lull in transaction activity, as recent blocks remain largely unfilled. Of all the blocks mined in the past 24 hours and the total revenue collected, less than 1%—specifically, 0.89%—originated from onchain fees.

At the moment, Foundry leads as the top bitcoin mining pool, contributing 32.33% of the global hashrate, followed by Antpool at 17.22%. Viabtc holds 15.02%, and F2pool accounts for 8.97%. Together, these four pools command a combined 73.54% of the network’s hashrate. The 6.81% increase in difficulty could temper the pace of the hashrate, as the metric now stands at an all-time high of 121.51 trillion following the mining of block height 891,072.