# Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Drops for Second Time in March

By [Doman](https://paragraph.com/@doman) · 2022-03-20

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The decrease is likely a result of miners unplugging their machines due to high energy costs, said Compass Mining CEO Whitt Gibbs.
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The difficulty of mining a bitcoin (BTC) block dropped 0.35% on Thursday, the second time this month, after a consistent climb since November.

*   On March 3, mining difficulty dropped 1.5%, data from information platform Glassnode shows.
    
*   The difficulty adjusts automatically relative to the computing power on the network, also known as the hashrate, to keep the time between each mined block relatively stable at 10 minutes.
    
*   The bitcoin mining hashrate has dropped from an all-time high in February of 248 exahash/second (EH/s) to 216 EH/s on March 17, according to Glassnode data.
    
*   "This slight drop is likely due to unprofitable miners unplugging ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits). As energy prices increase globally, we will likely see more ASICs fall off the network," Compass Mining founder and CEO Whitt Gibbs told CoinDesk in a Telegram message on Friday.
    
*   Electricity prices are soaring across the world as one of the world's largest exporters of fossil fuels, Russia, is enthralled in a war with Ukraine, and global energy supply chains are being severed by sanctions.
    
*   "My bet is that Kazakh miners going offline due to electricity shortages and a government crackdown on illegal mining caused the drop," Jaran Mellerud, researcher at Oslo-based Arcane Research, told CoinDesk.
    
*   On March 15, [Kazakh authorities](https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/03/15/kazakhstan-crackdown-forces-106-more-crypto-mines-to-close/) said they seized almost $200 million of equipment from crypto mining operations as they crack down on illicit mines. Legally operating miners in Kazakhstan had their power [cut off](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/01/25/kazakh-crypto-miners-cut-off-from-electricity-supply-until-end-of-january/) at the end of January, as the government struggled with energy shortages.
    
*   "Using HashrateIndex's prices per TH (terahash, a measurement of the hashrate, the computing power on the bitcoin mining network) for rigs with medium efficiency, the Kazakh government should have seized around 3 TH/s worth of mining rigs, equivalent to 1.5% of bitcoin's hashrate," Mellerud said.
    
*   Despite the fact that North American miners continue to plug in new machines, "the withdrawal of capacity from Kazakhstan is currently limiting bitcoin's hashrate growth," he said.
    

**_Read More:_** [**_Bitcoin Mining Difficulty: Everything You Need to Know_**](https://www.coindesk.com/learn/bitcoin-mining-difficulty-everything-you-need-to-know/)

_On March 17, the bitcoin network's mining difficulty dropped for the second time this month. (Glassnode)_

**_UPDATE (March 18, 8:40 UTC):_** _Adds comment from Mellerud and details about Kazakhstan in last four bullets._

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*Originally published on [Doman](https://paragraph.com/@doman/bitcoin-mining-difficulty-drops-for-second-time-in-march)*