On the night of January 1, the mining difficulty of Bitcoin rose by about 10 percent. At block 556416 it stood at 5.62 T. Similar figures were last recorded in October 2018. According to specialists, the increase occurred due to the calibration of the blockchain network's parameters, which changed the mathematical calculations involved in finding a new block. Bitcoin's hash rate rose to 40.16 EH/s, and it takes 9 minutes and 6 seconds to mine a block. Over the course of several days, the total power of the equipment used in the mining process increased,

Based on this data, some experts concluded that reports of miners leaving the crypto industry are exaggerated, and that within a month such dynamics could affect the state of the market and even the exchange rate of the cryptocurrency.