Are Bitcoin miners bullish? BTC miners face biggest difficulty bump in 3 months

Bitcoin (BTC) mining difficulty is set to rise by roughly 11% on Jan. 9, according to data from BTC.com. This marks the biggest increase in nearly four months that will put the metric over 20 trillion for the first time ever. 

“Hashrate is on a tear!” commented popular pseudonymous Bitcoin trader hodlonaut three days ago. “When difficulty readjusts in 3 days, it will crush through 20T for the first time in Bitcoin history.”

Bitcoin network difficulty reaches 20 trillion 

The network difficulty is a relative measure of how hard it is to mine a new block for the Bitcoin blockchain.

With the hash rate currently at record levels at around 148 EH/s, the difficulty adjustment, which occurs every 2016 blocks, makes sure that the time between blocks mined remains 10 minutes on average. 

Bitcoin network difficulty. Source: Blockchain.com

Miners remain bullish

Meanwhile, simultaneous rising hash rate and mining difficulty suggest that miners are continuing to allocate a record number of resources to secure and invest in the network.

Total BTC outflows from miner addresses. Source: CryptoQuant

Since the halving in May, the total outflows of BTC from miners have been gradually decreasing on average — the opposite of BTC/USD. Hence, miners are still showing no signs of major selling despite the price of Bitcoin skyrocketing to over $41,000 in the past week.