Bitcoin mining conditions remain challenging as hashprice stays close to $32 per PH/s/day despite a modest recovery in network hashrate. The Bitcoin network’s seven-day average hashrate reached approximately 920 EH/s, while transaction fee contribution declined and another small difficulty increase is currently projected.
Riot Platforms has signed a 20-year agreement to provide 191 MW of critical IT capacity from its Rockdale, Texas campus to a leading frontier AI company. The contract is expected to generate approximately $9.1 billion in revenue and highlights how major Bitcoin miners are increasingly using their power infrastructure for AI and high-performance computing alongside mining operations.
Bitcoin miners are back to business as usual after last month’s Arctic blast iced operations across the U.S., and the network’s hashrate has clawed its way back above the 1 zettahash per second (ZH/s) mark. Even so, mining revenue is painfully lean to start March at under $30 per petahash per second (PH/s), and difficulty is projected to climb yet again.
Following the prior difficulty recalibration that occurred 2,016 blocks ago—roughly two weeks back on Feb. 7—the Bitcoin protocol has now delivered a sharp counterpunch. On Thursday, at block height 937440, mining difficulty climbed 14.73%, effectively wiping out the earlier steep reduction and reminding participants that in this arena, gravity is optional and reversals are swift.
While bitcoin just posted its steepest difficulty decline since China’s 2021 mining purge, the network has already found its footing, and the next adjustment cycle is shaping up to be a sizable one, with roughly 34% of blocks still left to be mined before the epoch closes.
This weekend, the Bitcoin network logged its steepest difficulty cut since July 3, 2021—a moment that followed China’s sweeping ban on mining and trading, which triggered a sharp market sell-off and sent miners scrambling for exits beyond the region.
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