Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Hits 100 Trillion For First Time As Key On-Chain Metric Turns Bullish — Is $120,000 Nigh?

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty recently rose to its highest ever. The mining difficulty — which measures how hard it is to discover new blocks on the Bitcoin blockchain — spiked 6% to an all-time high of 101.65 trillion amid a record hash rate for the network.

Meanwhile, a key technical indicator flipped bullish, indicating that Bitcoin’s parabolic rally toward $120,000 remains on course.

Bitcoin Price Poised To Reach $120K, Bullish MVRV Suggests

Soon after polls closed, the price of Bitcoin crossed back above $75,000 — which is an important local psychological level — after Donald Trump won the bitterly-contested U.S. election on Nov. 5.

A market analyst at on-chain analytics firm CryptoQuant, CoinLupin, is settling for the traditional method, which entails utilizing the market value realized value (MVRV) indicator to estimate Bitcoin’s present value.

Bitcoin’s MVRV currently hovers at 2 while its price hovers at just above $75K, suggesting that the “market’s surface value is twice the on-chain estimated value,” the analyst posited.

The analyst also determined that the MVRV indicator recently transcended the 365-day average and is currently above the 4-year average, which usually mirrors Bitcoin’s cycle.

“This suggests that the upward trend remains intact, and generally, the cycle peak tends to occur when the MVRV reaches levels between 3 and 3.6.”

CoinLupin said that if the realized value (RV) stays constant, a 43-77% growth is crucial for the MVRV ratio.

“When applied to Bitcoin, this translates to a target of $95K to $120K.”

The pundit explained that the RV is likely to surge as the market advances with fresh buying demand, and a peak could be created above these regions when considering previous cycles. 

“While Bitcoin has risen significantly over the past year, it has only returned to the average level on the MVRV indicator. The upward momentum is still being maintained.”

Bitcoin Network Difficulty Marks New ATH

Fundamentally, Bitcoin appears set to enter a bull run cycle for the remainder of 2024 and beyond. The mining difficulty of the world’s largest and oldest crypto has hit a fresh all-time high.

As such, miners will need to work harder, meaning that only the strongest and most efficient operations in the industry will be involved in securing the network. This is largely considered good news — as the price of Bitcoin rockets and more people rush to the network, the stronger it should be. 

Bitcoin was changing hands at $75,891 as of press time, up 9.6% over the last 24 hours. And with the U.S. elections concluding with a pro-crypto president on deck, a Bitcoin target of $100,000 and beyond in the coming weeks is looking more likely.