With miners bracing themselves for a predicted increase in mining difficulty, the innovative approach offered by Nautilus promises to revolutionize the energy-intensive process.
TeraWulf Launches 100% Nuclear-Powered Bitcoin Mining
Bitcoin mining has been a controversial topic due to its energy-consuming process and the negative impact on energy resources and the environment. However, several Bitcoin mining firms have turned to renewable sources of energy, like hydropower and solar. TeraWulf, the owner and operator of domestic Bitcoin mining facilities powered by 91% zero-carbon energy, has now launched a 100% nuclear-powered Bitcoin mining facility in the US.
It’s no coincidence that TeraWulf is making this move now when Bitcoin miners are getting ready for a fresh difficulty adjustment and the processing power needed to mine new coins is at an all-time high.
According to projections from the cryptocurrency mining data company CoinWarz, the next difficulty adjustment will take place on March 10, increasing the current difficulty level from 43.05 T to 44.46 T.
The amount of computational power committed to mining Bitcoin globally (the “hash rate”) typically leads to an increase in the difficulty level of Bitcoin mining. To keep the average time between blocks mined on the blockchain at 10 minutes regardless of the hash rate, the difficulty increases proportionally.
Bitcoin’s hash rate has been steadily increasing since June of 2021. It set a new record of over 300 EH/s in late January of this year and then surpassed it by close to 100 EH/s in late February. According to CoinWarz, on March 2nd, the hash rate once again approached its all-time high, reaching 385 EH/s.
The Bitcoin network becomes more secure and resistant to attacks as its hash rate rises, which is seen as an indication of its widespread usage. Because of this, Bitcoin is often regarded as the safest cryptocurrency available.
In spite of this, miners’ margins will be squeezed even further as a result of the increased difficulties, which might be challenging for many of the major mining corporations following a bad market that has lasted for almost a year.
Conclusion
The largest publicly traded Bitcoin miner, Riot Blockchain, published earnings earlier this month showing a loss of more than $500 million from its mining operations in 2022. Even though the company generated significantly more BTC in 2022, the loss was significantly higher than the $15.4m loss it declared in 2021.
How Riot and other major mining operations will respond to this year’s steadily increasing Bitcoin mining difficulty and escalating energy costs is yet to be seen.