I noticed an interesting movement in the networks — the mining difficulty of Bitcoin dropped by 11.16% immediately after the last recalculation, down to 125.86 T. For context, this is the sharpest decline since the Chinese crash in 2021, when mining difficulty nearly fell by a third.

It seems that some of the previously shut-down capacities have come back online. The reasons are clear — miners were losing money due to poor profitability, plus a winter storm in the US disrupted infrastructure. According to analysts, at the end of January, the network’s hash rate dropped to a local low of 826 EH/s but then recovered to 927 EH/s.

As a result, after the recalculation, Bitcoin mining difficulty stabilized, the hash rate increased to 1.3 ZH/s, and block generation time normalized to about 7 minutes. It looks like the network is recovering from the stress. It will be interesting to see if this growth holds or if there will be new fluctuations.