Bitcoin’s price has faced turbulence as global financial markets sold-off sharply following President Donald Trump’s announcement of new tariffs. MicroStrategy’s relentless Bitcoin accumulation has paused, raising questions about its future strategy. On the mining side, difficulty has finally dropped after months of relentless increases, but in the days after network hashrate has hit yet another all-time high. The mempool cleared for the first time in nearly two years, leaving miners with hardly any fees. For premium members, we explore Grayscale’s new Bitcoin Miners ETF and how it compares to Valkyrie’s WGMI fund. Let’s dive in.
Bitcoin Price Impacted by Market Turmoil
MicroStrategy’s Buying Spree Hits Pause
Difficulty Finally Dropped
Hashrate Hits ATH Again
Mempool Has Cleared First Time in Nearly 2 Years
Bitcoin Mining Community Funds Non-Profit by Solo-Mining a Full Block
Premium Members Only:
Grayscale Launches Bitcoin Miners ETF
Comparison to the CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI)
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Global financial markets faced a sharp sell-off following President Donald Trump’s announcement of new tariffs: 25% on imports from Mexico and most goods from Canada, and 10% on goods from China. These measures have fuelled fears of an escalating trade war, driving investors away from riskier assets and triggering a wave of volatility across markets—including Bitcoin.
While Bitcoin has not been immune to the turmoil, its price movement has been relatively more stable compared to the rest of the crypto market. BTC tapped the range support area at $91,000 and has since rebounded, softening its 24-hour losses to -4.16%. The chart below highlights that BTC has simply returned to a range that has been monitored in recent weeks.
Much of the selling pressure wasn’t purely sentiment-driven—it was exacerbated by forced liquidations. As prices declined, leveraged traders betting on Bitcoin’s continued uptrend were caught in cascading liquidations, reaching record highs. It’s worth noting that with Bitcoin now trading around $100,000, the total market cap of liquidated positions is significantly larger than in previous major market events, such as the COVID-19 crash in 2020 or the FTX collapse in 2022.
MicroStrategy’s Buying Spree Hits Pause
MicroStrategy, one of Bitcoin’s most influential institutional players, has paused its aggressive BTC accumulation after a buying spree that began in November 2024. During this period, it set records with massive purchases, including 27,200 BTC on November 11 and 51,780 BTC on November 18, pushing its total holdings past 470,000 BTC. While these acquisitions drove MSTR’s stock to a mid-November peak of $470, it later dropped below $290 before rebounding to $335. Despite the pause, MicroStrategy’s long-term commitment to Bitcoin remains unchanged as investors watch for signs of renewed accumulation.
Difficulty Finally Dropped
On January 27th, at block height 880,992, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty decreased by 2.12%, marking its first decline since late September. This adjustment brought the network difficulty down to 108.1 trillion from its previous record high of 110.4 trillion. The slight drop reflects reduced network hashrate or a marginal dip in computational power on the network.
Over the last four months, Bitcoin’s difficulty had risen eight consecutive times. The latest adjustment might be a reflection of the curtailments due to cold weather in the US during the month of January week and/or suggests institutional mining companies may be slowing their hashrate expansions. Currently a difficulty increase of 6.5-7.7% is projected for Sunday the 9th of February.
Hashrate Hits ATH Again
After remaining relatively stable for the past two months, Bitcoin’s hashrate surged to a new all-time high in recent days. Climbing to 845 EH/s, it increased by 69 EH/s, or 8.1%, in just a few days. It appears that curtailments due to cold weather in North America have ended for now, allowing miners to operate at full capacity again.
Mempool Has Cleared First Time in Nearly 2 Years
The mempool is a temporary queue where unconfirmed transactions wait to be included in a block by miners. Over the weekend the mempool has been cleared. This means that all pending transactions have been processed and included in a block, leaving the mempool temporarily empty.
This typically happens when transaction demand is low, the network has high capacity, and miners are able to process transactions quickly without congestion. As a result, fees are also lower since there is no backlog of unconfirmed transactions. There have been multiple blocks whereby low, medium and high priority transactions cost the minimum of 1 Sat/vB. Leaving miners with barely any fees to be rewarded.
This event was significant because the mempool has not completely cleared since April 22, 2023. A cleared mempool has become a rare event in recent years due to increasing demand for Bitcoin transactions, particularly with the rise of Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens. When the mempool does clear, it creates a brief period where transactions can be confirmed almost instantly with very low fees before congestion builds up again.
Bitcoin Mining Community Funds Non-Profit by Solo-Mining a Full Block
Last week a fundraising event was organized in support of the 256 Foundation, a charity founded by Bitcoin advocates Econoalchemist and Rod Roudi to make Bitcoin and freedom tech accessible to anyone. In stead of donating Bitcoin or fiat, they asked the Bitcoin mining community to direct their hashrate to solo-mine pool.
During the event block 881,423 was successfully mined with a coinbase tag reading “Apollo/mined by 256 Foundation/” by a miner identified as “FutureBit Apollo Solo.” This marks the first time a fundraiser has been conducted using Bitcoin hashrate, generating 3.146 BTC in rewards—worth approximately $330,300.
The event lasted nearly 10 hours, attracting over 1.12 EH/s from around 350 different participants at its peak. When the winning block was found, approximately 881 Ph/s was directed to the mining pool. The winning nonce was ultimately submitted by a miner from the U.S.-based Bitcoin mining firm Megawatt HQ.
The following content is exclusively for our Premium Members:
Grayscale Launches Bitcoin Miners ETF
Comparison to the CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI)
