Bitcoin's (CRYPTO:BTC) total hashrate is approaching its all-time peak, even as mining conditions become more challenging.
As of Wednesday, the hashrate stood at 665 exahash per second (EH/s), just 12 EH/s away from the record high of 677 EH/s recorded on July 25, 2024.
This near-record level comes amid an increase in mining difficulty and lower earnings for miners.
On August 28, 2024, Bitcoin's mining difficulty rose by 2.99%, moving from 86.87 trillion to 89.47 trillion.
This increase has made it tougher for miners to discover new blocks, particularly as Bitcoin's price dipped by 1.5% over the past week, despite a brief uptick on September 4.
Miners' earnings also remain low, with the current value of 1 petahash per second (PH/s) of output per day at $41.69.
While this is an improvement from August 5, when the price per PH/s was $35.78, revenues are still strained.
Despite these challenges, Bitcoin’s mining operations have shown resilience.
The current hashrate is maintained by 55 recognised mining pools, with Foundry and Antpool being the largest contributors, generating 201.25 EH/s and 167.47 EH/s of SHA256 hashpower, respectively.
If Bitcoin's price improves in the coming week, the hashrate could break its previous record.
However, an increase in the hashrate and faster block times might lead to another difficulty adjustment, projected to rise by 2.2% on September 11, 2024.
The climbing hashrate indicates that miners are enduring the lower revenue environment, thanks to several supporting factors.
These include higher fees collected around the time of Bitcoin’s fourth halving, newly released mining hardware delivering higher terahash per second (TH/s) rates, and the availability of stock sales by publicly traded mining companies.
However, the sustainability of mining operations under current market conditions remains a pressing question, especially if Bitcoin prices do not recover soon.
At press time, Bitcoin (BTC) price was at $58,094.11.