It's Now Harder to Mine Bitcoin Than Ever Before

Bitcoin mining difficulty - the measure of how hard it is to earn mining rewards in the world's largest cryptocurrency by market cap - has reached a new record high above 7.93 trillion.

Bitcoin is designed to adjust its mining difficulty every 2,016 blocks, based on the amount of computing power deployed to the network.

Bitcoin miners across the world have been performing calculations at an average 56.77 quintillion hashes per second over the last 14 days to compete for mining rewards on the world's first blockchain, according to data from mining pool BTC.com.

BTC.com data further indicates the average bitcoin mining hash rate in the last 24-hour and three-day periods were 59.58 EH/s and 59.70 EH/s, respectively, even higher than the average 56.77 EH/s from May 15 to June 27, or any 14-day data in the network's history.

Assuming all such additional computing power has come from more widely used equipment such as the AntMiner S9, which performs calculations at an average rate of 14 tera hashes per second, that suggests more than 2 million units of mining equipment may have been switched on over the past several months.

BTC.com further estimates the bitcoin mining difficulty will jump.

By another seven percent at the beginning of the next adjustment cycle, which would be the first time for bitcoin mining difficulty to cross the eight trillion threshold.

Such computing interest comes at a time when mining farms in China, especially in the country's mountainous southwest, have been gradually plugging in equipment as the rainy summer approaches.

Xun Zheng, CEO of mining farm operator Hashage based in Chengdu that owns several facilities across China's southwestern provinces, said there had been no rain in the area for over 20 days since early May, which was "Unusual."

As a result, in early June his firm was only operating at 40 percent of capacity; it can host more than 200,000 ASIC miners.