Despite the current bear market and significant losses in value, Bitcoin continues to dominate the market and miners keep the competition intense. The tanking price of BTC forced some miners to liquidate their positions in the market to pay for expenses related to energy costs. With the current geopolitical situation, many European miners will collapse in October when new energy prices will hit the UK, Germany, France, and other countries affected by the ongoing Ukraine war.
The recent (third in a row) increase in difficulty was over 9.2% which is much higher than in January. The difficulty is now 30.98 trillion with many estimating that it will reach 31.16 trillion by the end of September and will be just 0.09 trillion shy of the last record that was reached on May 10. The collective hash rate is now 224 EH/s which is, again, lower than the all-time low, but it is big enough to warrant yet another difficult increase with the next one on the way.
With so much pressure on miners, many have to resort to extreme measures (selling their BTC assets) to cover their growing expenses and upkeep costs. The news comes amidst other reports about the limited power supply in Texas where most mining conglomerates in the US operate and bans of Bitcoin in Afghanistan and some other authoritarian countries.
While it may sound negative, there are many advantages to the current situation. First and foremost, the increased difficulty opens new opportunities for miners operating from countries with lower electricity prices. The second is that many people will be able to adapt to the new reality and start building ASIC for cheaper thanks to the influx of video cards on the market creating new mining hubs and sustaining the network.
The BTC is slowly recovering. The uncertainty in the market should limit its recovery rate, but it, seemingly, helps BTC to gain new support levels. We are stuck in the sideways movement for a while, but the relentless zeal of miners keeps us hopeful that we will see a dramatic rise in BTC prices by the end of this year!