Bitcoin's Computing Power Sets Record as Over 100K New Miners Go Online

The average bitcoin mining hash rate over the last two weeks has reached 71.43 quintillion hashes per second, up from 64.49EH/s on July 23.

The threshold was breached as bitcoin adjusted its mining difficulty at block height 586,672 on Monday 2:52 UTC - that is a 6.94EH/s, or 10.78 percent jump since mid July.

Bitcoin mining difficulty is a measure of how hard it is to compete for mining rewards on bitcoin.

Assume this additional 6.9.EH/s computing power has all come from powerful ASIC miners, such as Bitmain's AntMiner S17 or MicroBT's WhatsMiner M20S, both of which boast a mining rate of around 55TH/s and recently hit the market.

The continued interest in bitcoin mining comes at a time when the cryptocurrency's price appears to be en route to challenging all-time highs, however distantly, and amid the arrival of the rainy season in China, which leads to cheaper hydropower electricity costs in the country's southwest provinces - a region that is reported.

Bitcoin's mining difficulty has also set a new record of nearly 10 trillion.

In Bitmain's 2018 initial public offering prospectus, the Beijing-based mining giant claimed it had a 70 percent market dominance.

Michael Zhong, a former mining analyst who now operates mining farms at a startup called Force Mine, told CoinDesk that based on his experience, the production capacity ranking among major Chinese miner makers for their flagship products have changed over the years.

From January to June this year, the delivery capacity ranking has reshuffled, with now MicroBT's WhatsMiner M20 series at the top, followed by Bitmain's S17 series miners and then InnoSilicon, Canaan, and Ebang, Zhong added.

Bitmain's flagship AntMiner S17 Pro ranks third in terms of mining profitability, following BitFury's Tardis and MicroBT's WhatsMiner M20S. The cost for WhatsMiner M20S is around $3,000, while that of AntMiner S17 Pro.