The Bitcoin and crypto exuberance continues. So far, it’s 12 straight days of consecutive price gains for BTC, which is actually nearing a record.

If it tips over 15 days, then it’s time to pop one of those little streamer things. Before considering whether you really shoulda skimmed off some of this price movement in your portfolio by now.

But regardless of personal trading strategies, the OG crypto has now cracked the US$21k mark once again, for the first time since early November, and has finally (after about 381 days) moved back above its 200-day moving average. A good thing.

Why Bitcoin’s increasing ‘mining difficulty’ is positive

What’s also a good thing, as crypto and markets analyst Simon Peters from eToro notes, is the fact the Bitcoin mining difficulty has just hit a fresh all-time high as of Sunday, rising rising 10.26% to 37.73 trillion.

“This comes as the Bitcoin hashrate set a new ATH on 6th January, too,” Peters said. “The difficulty and hashrate generally rises because of more competition between miners effectively crowding the network.”

The reason this is good, said the analyst in some commentary shared with Stockhead, is because the more miners on the Bitcoin network the more secure it is – although that doesn’t always necessarily correlate to price moves.

“It is also a signal that is common during or after bearish episodes where background usage and development keeps going…