The state of Bitcoin mining
Bitcoin mining uses computing power to validate transactions and add new blocks to the blockchain, rewarding miners with newly minted Bitcoin while keeping the network secure.
The process brings new coins into circulation but grows harder over time as the network raises difficulty about every two weeks, or every 2,016 blocks, and halves block rewards about every four years.
In August 2025, mining difficulty hit a record 127.6 trillion, before climbing again to 134.7 trillion on Sept. 5. On Thursday, the difficulty rate climbed to 150.84 trillion, signalling that Bitcoin is more difficult to mine today than it has ever been.
The rising difficulty and associated costs have forced some players out. In June 2025, Bit Digital said it would shut down its Bitcoin mining operations to shift toward an Ethereum treasury strategy.
The company’s CEO, Sam Tabar, told Cointelegraph that the “Bitcoin mining industry is going to be dead in two years,” adding that “there’s no way the mining industry can survive another halving.”
The difficulty of mining Bitcoin has also led to an increase in dominance by large institutional miners. A recent report from The Miner Mag showed that the top four public miners — MARA, IREN, Cango, and CleanSpark — accounted for 19.07% of the total block rewards in July.
Yet, solo miners are still occasionally able to successfully mine blocks. On July 3, a solo miner produced block 903,883, earning nearly $350,000 from the block reward along with transaction fees paid by users to secure faster confirmation.
A few weeks later, a second solo miner collected more than $373,000 in rewards based on Bitcoin’s price that day after mining block 907,283.
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