According to Bloomberg, a significant portion of the increase in Bitcoin mining difficulty on Monday might be ascribed to Ethereum's "Merge" upgrade
In the two weeks prior to Monday, the Bitcoin mining difficulty, which represents the amount of effort miners must expend to validate blockchain transactions in order to mine Bitcoin
The amount of computer power used for mining, or hashrate, fluctuates in direct proportion to changes in mining difficulty.
According to experts, the rise in Bitcoin mining can be partially attributed to the fall in Ether mining following the Merge upgrade on September 15, 2022
According to Bloomberg, the upgrade replaced almost 1 million mining computers with holders of Ether for mining Ethereum cryptocurrency.
Proof-of-work requires miners to compete by using their computers to solve mathematical problems in order to extract cryptocurrencies.