Crypto Ecosystems • August 25, 2023, 9:34AM EDT Published 1 minute earlier on 
The Block
Quick Take
- Bitcoin’s mining difficulty level has reached an all-time high.
- Analysts point to on-chain metrics showing miners are accumulating the digital asset.
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Bitcoin’s mining difficulty level reached an all-time high of 55.62 trillion hashes this week.
According to Bitfinex analysts, the increase in mining difficulty suggests “miners believe the current BTC level is fairly valued, or maybe a little under priced of its true value.”
Coinwarz charts show a steeply climbing difficulty level since July 2021, when a Chinese crackdown took many operators off-line. Metrics suggest the next difficulty adjustment for the network is estimated to take place in early September which will see the level increase from 55.62 trillion hashes to 56.37 trillion hashes.
Bitcoin miners accumulating
The increased difficulty level coincides with a low selling rate from miners, according to this week’s Bitfinex report. This can be interpreted as miner confidence that bitcoin will eventually rebound.
“Miners are investing more resources to mine bitcoin at these prices, that could be highly profitable to them,” the analysts said. The observation corroborates with CryptoQuant data showing an accumulation of the digital asset in miner wallets since June 20.
Bitcoin pioneer Max Keiser told The Block, “the rising hash-rate and difficulty adjustment mean bitcoin’s dominance and path to becoming the world’s reserve currency is picking up speed and strength.”
Bitcoin is attempting to recover from $1 billion in futures liquidations last Thursday, with the price hugging tight to the $26,000 line. Investors have been cautious ahead of Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell’s monetary policy statement at Jackson Hole on Friday.
Bitcoin was changing hands for around $26,108 at 8:40 a.m. ET, according to CoinGecko. The price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization is down 1.1% over the past 24 hours.
