The difficulty of mining Bitcoin has been steadily climbing for some time now, as more and more miners compete with one another to be the one to mine the next block on the Bitcoin blockchain successfully.

With the weather now clearing up in Texas, the world’s Bitcoin mining stronghold, miners are coming back online to double down on their operations. This time around, this has pushed the mining hash rate to a new all-time high.

Hash Rate Reaches All-Time High

Over the weekend, the mining hash rate reached a new all-time high. According to info from Hashrate Index backed by data from Ycharts, Bitcoin’s hash rate spiked to 465 EH/s on Saturday from 406 EH/s on the previous day.

Specifically, the 7-day average hash rate hit 401 EH/s on Saturday, while the 3-day average has risen a more staggering 18% to 448 EH/s. Although the hash rate has now dropped to 425 EH/s at the time of writing, it is still at its highest levels and up more than 119.1% from one year ago. 

The increase in the hash rate has naturally led to an increase in the block production rate. Over the last couple of months, BTC miners had been targeting a block production rate of 6 per hour, now, a block is produced at an average time of 9 minutes and 15 seconds.

Bitcoin Mining Revenue Hits $184 Million In Q2

Bitcoin has seen a flurry of increase in transaction volumes this year, as the cryptocurrency continues to dominate the industry. In the past 24 hours alone, the total volume of bitcoin traded increased by 30.37%. 

According to a report by published by Coin Metrics on July 5, BTC miners generated a remarkable revenue of $2.4 billion during the second quarter of 2023. Out of this amount, $184 million came from transaction fees alone, representing more than the five preceding quarters combined. 

This increase in transaction fee revenue is traced to the increase in transaction volume after BRC-20 tokens were introduced on the Bitcoin blockchain. The BRC-20 came in as a token standard to allow the creation and transfer facilities of fungible tokens on the blockchain through the use of ordinal inscriptions.

Bitcoin miners have also experienced favorable macroeconomic conditions in the last quarter, including lower electricity rates for miners based in the United States. On the other hand, Bitcoin mining has been growing in the Middle East, with the UAE leading the charge. Miners in the UAE now produce approximately 13 EH/s, accounting for almost 4% of the total hash rate. 

As for Bitcoin, the price of the cryptocurrency has been ranging in the $30,000 mark since late June.