The complexity of bitcoin mining has reached a record high

The complexity of bitcoin mining increased by 13.55% in 2022. Experts note that this is the biggest change since May 2021. According to the btc.com website, after the increase in mining complexity, 35.6 trillion hashes are now required to mine one BTC. The current hashrate of bitcoin is 257 million Tx/s. For example, last year, it reached about 140 million Tx/s.

The complexity of BTC mining illustrates a gloomy outlook for miners, as electricity costs will increase significantly. Recently, mining company Argo Blockchain announced that rising operating costs, falling crypto asset prices, and increased mining complexity have reduced the company’s revenue and net profit. Now, Argo Blockchain is going to sell 87 million shares for $ 27 million, all in order to stay afloat until the end of next year.

Financial corporations see the difficult situation for mining as a way to invest in cryptocurrency mining. Thus, the investment giant Grayscale announced the launch of the Grayscale Digital Infrastructure Opportunities (GDIO) fund, which is going to attract investments to purchase equipment for the management company of the bitcoin miner pool Foundry Digital.

As a reminder, bitcoin has been equated to oil production due to its significant environmental impact. According to researchers, between 2016 and 2021, every dollar of bitcoin’s market value accounted for an average of $ 0.35 of global «climate damage.» «On this scale, bitcoin mining is in the range between beef production and crude oil burned as gasoline,» environmentalists and scientists say. The scientists concluded that the mining of the first cryptocurrency has too many «red flags» to consider bitcoin an economically stable asset. The researchers believe that the network’s transition to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm would not have been able to dramatically change the situation.

The researchers' opinions are confirmed by cryptocurrency market experts. European miners have faced a global energy crisis that has negatively affected their income — high electricity prices in the EU have made mining many cryptocurrencies unprofitable.