During the last month, Bitcoin’s hashrate has been coasting along above the 200 exahash per second (EH/s) zone, minus a number of drops here and there above and below that range. Following two difficulty changes that saw the difficulty decrease by 1.84%, the network’s difficulty is expected to increase 4.24% within the next 13 hours.
Bitcoin’s Difficulty Expected to Reach All-Time High
The difficulty of Bitcoin mining dropped twice in the past month, giving Bitcoin miners two opportunities to get lucky. Block height 725760 was the first to suffer a drop of 1.49%. The second drop in difficulty, a drop of 0.35%, occurred on March 17th, 2022 at block height 727,000.
It was 1.84% simpler for everyone involved in mining to find BTC block blocks after the two consecutive drops. Prior to these reductions the difficulty was 27.97 Trillion. The current difficulty stands at 27.45 Trillion on Wednesday morning, 8:00 AM (ET). The difficulty will rise 4.24% in the coming 13 hours, if the current estimates are accurate.
With an expected 4.24% difficulty increase taking place, Bitcoin’s network difficulty will break records by reaching an all-time high (ATH). The difficulty level will rise to 4.24% for the following two weeks. The most difficult difficulty parameter that miners have faced in their careers is the one they will face.
Moreover, the difficulty changes that have taken place since January 1, 2020, after block height 610,848, moved at the fastest pace in the network’s lifetime. It took for instance 4,015 days or more than ten years to reach a difficulty rating at 13.80 trillion. After block height 610.848, it took just 820 days (or just over 2 years) to reach current 27,45 trillion.
At the time of writing, the network’s hashrate is coasting along at 204.27 EH/s and has remained high during the last two weeks. The hashrate is fluctuating, with a low at 153.97 EH/s and high at 246.88 on March 22, respectively. Foundry USA, which has 17.54% global havehrate, is the world’s top-mining pool. Foundry USA is currently at 35.88 EH/s and has discovered 77 blocks in the past three days.
Foundry USA, Antpool and Binance Pool are the next three global hashrate position leaders, followed by Poolin, Poolin, F2pool, and Poolin. Antpool and Foundry USA were the two top mining pools that have found the most blocks in the last 30 day (1,480 block combined). The upcoming difficulty ATH will make it interesting to watch how mining pools react. The hashrate and bitcoin miners will react to the difficulty change.
What do you think about the network’s upcoming difficulty change? Please comment below to let us know your thoughts on this topic.
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