Bitcoin mining difficulty poised to spike by most since January amid colder weather

The difficulty of mining Bitcoin (BTC) is expected to increase by about 9% on Wednesday as North American miners begin to ramp up production ahead of the cooler months.

This would be one of the biggest advances since August 2021, when miners began coming back online after the industry was banned in China, which accounted for 44% of mining activity at the time.

Bitcoin's difficulty automatically adjusts so that it takes about 10 minutes to mine a Bitcoin block, depending on the amount of computing power on the network. The higher the hashrate, a measure of computing power, the higher the difficulty. Similarly, as the hashrate decreases, so does the level of difficulty.