Bitcoin's mining difficulty increased by 3.22% on Thursday, reaching an all-time high, as the network's hash rate also surged to a record high.
The difficulty changes about every two weeks and measures how hard a miner would have to work to verify transactions on a block.
The higher difficulty shows that Bitcoin mining is more competitive.
In Thursday's correction, mining difficulty data hit 49.55 trillion at block height 790,272.
Bitcoin mining difficulty usually increases as more miners come online, which increases competition.
Miners are rewarded with Bitcoin for validating transactions on the network. Their profitability is highly dependent on Bitcoin spot price and mining difficulty.
Bitcoin's hash rate, a measure of computing power used for mining, was at around 368.5 exahashes per second on Wednesday, up from 350.8 exahash on May 4, data from Blockchain.com shows .