Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Drops 0.4% After All-Time High Marathon Digital Holdings Bitcoin Production Up 35%

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty has experienced a slight decrease, falling to approximately 126.4 trillion after reaching an all-time high of 126.9 trillion on May 31. This adjustment, which occurred on June 15, marked a small but notable reduction in the difficulty level. The decrease in difficulty is often indicative of changes in mining hardware efficiency, energy costs, and broader economic factors. Despite the slight dip, the Bitcoin network's hashrate remains robust, surpassing a psychological barrier of 1 zetahash per second (ZH/s) in April, signaling increased network strength.

This adjustment is a landmark for mining as Bitcoin’s difficulty is automatically adjusted approximately every two weeks to reflect changes in the total hashrate, the sum of all miners’ computing power aiming for solutions to the Bitcoin network. When additional miners join the network, the difficulty increases to help maintain block production at regular intervals. Conversely, when miners go offline due to cost or inefficiency, the difficulty drops in adjusting. The hashrate is still robust, surpassing a psychological barrier of 1 zetahash per second (ZH/s) in April.

While the difficulty has decreased slightly, several miners are facing heavier workloads and rising costs. The April 2024 halving, a scheduled phenomenon that cuts Bitcoin’s block reward in half every four years, slashed the reward for successfully mining a block to 3.125 BTC from 6.25 BTC for miners, which translates into half the revenue for the same work. Factors such as surging electricity prices, rising hardware costs, and the pressure to stay updated with the latest technological turnover have caused many smaller or medium mining operations to be on the brink. Production costs are expensive for some small-scale miners, particularly in regions with relatively high electric power prices or relatively inefficient power supply systems. For those miners, keeping operations going is burning cash, a high-stakes wager, given that they either have access to cheap energy or anticipate a sharp rise in the price of Bitcoin shortly.

Despite these challenges, larger publicly traded companies are ramping up and holding onto Bitcoin. Marathon Digital Holdings, for example, produced roughly 35% more Bitcoin mined in May despite facing industry headwinds. The firm also mined 950 BTC for the month, an increase from April’s amount. Rather than liquidating coins into fiat to cover costs — as many miners often tend to do — Marathon decided to hold onto those obtained through Bitcoin mining and increased the size of their corporate treasury to 49,179 BTC. CleanSpark, another major mining company with a degree of emphasis on renewable energy, also reported solid results. The company reportedly mined 694 BTC during the month, an increase of approximately 9% from the prior month. CleanSpark’s capacity of hashrate, an essential performance measure, rose to 45.6 exahashes per second (EH/s) by the end of May. Both companies are part of a new breed of miners who consider Bitcoin a revenue source and a strategic financial asset. It has boiled down to holding Bitcoin on the balance sheet, a decision increasingly adopted by the corporate treasuries experimenting with crypto.