United States: This Weather Phenomenon Is Causing Bitcoin Mining Difficulty To Plunge

The intense cold wave in the United States has caused the first negative adjustment of bitcoin mining difficulty since September 2024, according to the mining company Luxor. In January, a powerful explosion in the Arctic caused temperatures in the USA to drop, increasing electricity demand and driving up energy prices. This situation forced many BTC miners to slow down their operations, leading to a decrease in mining difficulty.

The cold in the United States leads to a decrease in bitcoin mining difficulty

The United States plays a key role in bitcoin mining, accounting for about 36% of the global hash rate. Texas alone contributes about 17% of this power, particularly thanks to companies like Riot Platforms, one of the largest miners in the country. However, the recent rise in energy prices due to mining difficulty has made BTC extraction less profitable. As a result, several mining companies are looking to diversify their activities by using their infrastructure for artificial intelligence and other high-performance computing workloads.

Mining difficulty is an indicator that measures the level of complexity in the process of validating blocks in a blockchain. Bitcoin’s difficulty adjusts approximately every two weeks based on the computing power available on the network. When this power decreases, as is currently the case due to the intense cold wave in the United States, it aligns downwards to maintain an average block validation time of around ten minutes.

A temporary situation

According to analysts at Luxor, this decrease in mining difficulty is a temporary disruption. With improving weather conditions, the stability of the hash rate should gradually recover. However, this episode highlights the vulnerability of the mining sector to fluctuations in energy prices and extreme weather conditions, which could influence future adjustments to bitcoin difficulty.

This cold wave in the United States thus highlights the impact of climatic conditions on bitcoin mining. Despite this temporary decrease in mining difficulty, network stability is expected to recover with improving temperatures.