The latest figures reveal that Bitcoin’s difficulty rating marks the 11th increase this year, rising 1.42% on Friday evening, making block rewards even more difficult. Despite five separate declines along the way, the difficulty of mining Bitcoin still has increased by 17.73% in 2025.
129.44 trillion: The highest difficulty in Bitcoin history
Bitcoin block rewards have become more difficult to capture after a 1.42% increase in network difficulty at block height of 909,216 on Friday. This adjustment brings the difficulty to 129.44 trillion. This is the best mark in the history of the network.
Simply put, 129.44 trillion reflects the average number of hashes miners have to calculate to successfully unearth a new block. The difficulty of mining Bitcoin is adjusted every 2 weeks (every 2,016 blocks) to bring block discovery closer to a 10-minute target, no matter how much computing power or hashrate the network commands are.
Bitcoin difficulty level for August 9, 2025. Source: coinwarz.com
With a record high in hashrates, blocks are discovered faster than usual, prompting hiking to the latest difficulty. If the block slows down an average of less than 10 minutes, the system instead becomes less difficult. So far, there have been 16 difficulty levels in 2025, with a modest increase of 0.61% since January 12th.
Of those, 11 increased, a rise of 34.27%, with five declines trimming 16.54% from the total. This has led to an increase in Bitcoin mining difficulty by 17.73% so far. The latest increase is slightly below the hashrate.
After reaching record 976 Exahash (EH/S) on August 8, the hash rate was relaxed to 965.97 EH/s. It is still too early to predict the exact outcome of the next retarget on August 29, 2025, but current data shows the possibility of a 1.77% reduction in difficulty.
The difficulty of Bitcoin mining continues to push in 2025 into record territory driven by unprecedented hashrate levels and frequent upward adjustments. With the next retarget approaching, miners are navigating tougher races for block rewards while watching signs of potential declines and increases later this month.