Hashrate Nears Record High as Bitcoin Price Drives Mining Growth

Bitcoin's hashrate has been steadily increasing, with the network adding 40 exahashes per second (EH/s) in the last five days, reaching 836 EH/s, which puts it close to the protocol's all-time high. Additionally, as Bitcoin's price has risen, so has the hashrate, which represents the estimated daily yield of one petahash per second (PH/s) of computing power.

Bitcoin Miners Struggle as Hashrate Reaches Peak

On Tuesday, March 25, 2025, Bitcoin miners saw an increase in revenue compared to the previous week. On March 18, the estimated value of one petahash per day was $46.21; today, it has risen to $49.57, according to data compiled by hashrateindex.com.

Bitcoin hash rate, hashrate, and average 24-hour block reward as of March 25, 2025, according to hashrateindex.com.

The increase provided some relief to miners who had been dealing with tighter margins during the first three weeks of March. Data from mempool.space shows an increase in network activity, with 48,116 unconfirmed transactions in the mempool as of 6:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday.

There are currently around 48,116 unconfirmed transactions in the mempool waiting to be confirmed. Source: mempool.space.

Transaction fees have also increased slightly. At the current rate of 31 satoshi per virtual byte (sat/vB), a high-priority transfer now costs $3.83. The recent rise in the price of BTC is the main driver of the increase in revenue, as transaction fees accounted for only 2.14% of total revenue over the past 24 hours.

Bitcoin fees have increased recently. Source: mempool.space.

Recent price changes have also pushed the hashrate up, with the network adding 40 EH/s, from 796 EH/s on March 20 to 836 EH/s today. This increase coincides with the 1.43% difficulty adjustment that occurred two days ago at block height 889,056.

The current mining difficulty is 113.76 trillion, slightly below the all-time high of 114.17 trillion reached six weeks ago at block height 883,008. The current changes in network dynamics indicate a period of rethinking for miners as they balance operating costs and revenues in the face of fluctuating difficulty and prices.

Bitcoin mining hashrate (seven-day simple moving average) as of March 25, 2025, according to hashrateindex.com.

As transaction fees continue to make up a small portion of revenue, miners’ profitability appears to be increasingly dependent on the market value of BTC. With the protocol slowly approaching historical thresholds, participants may need to adapt their strategies to cope with tightening margins and changing network conditions.

On the other hand, advances in application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) hardware may also contribute to increased computing power. Empirical analysis shows that fluctuations in the fiat price of Bitcoin trigger corresponding adaptations in the network hashrate, occurring after a time lag of one to six weeks—a rhythm determined by miners adjusting their operations to changing profit incentives.

Source: cryptonews.net