Summarised by Centrist
Sixteen years after Bitcoin’s first block was mined, its network strength has reached unprecedented levels.
Mining difficulty hit an all-time high as the cryptocurrency’s computing power surged, reflecting increased miner participation.
Bitcoin’s total computing power, or hashrate, surpassed 1,000 exahashes per second on January 3, nearly doubling from the previous year. Exahashes (EH/s) are a measure of computational power, representing one quintillion (10¹⁸) hash calculations per second, used to gauge the processing capacity of cryptocurrency networks like Bitcoin. This is roughly equivalent to the energy consumption of half of New Zealand’s national electricity demand.
Miners are allocating more resources despite April’s “halving”, which cut block rewards to 3.125 BTC. This is a pre-programmed event in Bitcoin’s code that reduces mining rewards by half approximately every four years, limiting supply and supposedly controlling inflation. Editor’s Note: Inflation has little meaning for an asset whose price fluctuates so much.
Major players like Riot Platforms and CleanSpark have expanded their operations, with Bitcoin miners holding treasuries valued at billions. For example, Marathon holds USD $4.4b (NZD $7.84b) in Bitcoin assets, according to BitcoinTreasuries.net.
Institutional inflows into Bitcoin continue to grow. Bitcoin ETFs crossed USD $100b (NZD $1.78b) in assets in November. Martin Burgherr of Sygnum noted, “2025 could mark a steep acceleration for institutional participation in crypto assets.”
In January of this year, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust reached USD $50b (NZD $89b) in assets faster than any ETF in history.
