The amount of bitcoin held by miners is just 500 BTC short of its all-time high. https://ift.tt/3ebEc14

According to on-chain analytics provider Glassnode, the amount of bitcoin held by miners is just 500 BTC short of its all-time high. Miners are currently holding just under an all-time high of 1.778 million BTC. The peak figure was hit in December 2020. Glassnode explained that “these coins are issued to miners as a reward for solving a block, but have never been spent on-chain.”

Miners have been accumulating since March 2020.

Bitcoin miners have been accumulating since March 2020, following a massive selloff during the first couple of months of this year. Bitcoin has also been leaving exchanges over the past few months, which is another indication of accumulation. According to BitInfoCharts, mining profitability has actually fallen since mid-October and is currently $0.235 per day per TH/s. It has fallen 52% from $0.49 per day per TH/s on Nov 9. Profitability is currently at its lowest since late June, when hash rates slumped following the miner migration from China.

Difficulty continues to increase as more miners compete for the reward.

Difficulty, which is a measure of the complexity of mathematical calculations for block rewards, or finding a hash below a given target, has been increasing since mid-August as more and more miners compete for the reward. Bitcoin’s average hash rate is now just 14% away from its May 13 all-time high of 197 EH/s, according to BitInfoCharts. On Dec 16, Glassnode reported that Bitcoin difficulty was just 3.5% below its all-time high, adding: It has taken 180-days to almost fully recover from 52% of network hash-power going offline during the Great Migration.