While Bitcoin’s mining difficulty was expected to decrease two days ago on June 8, instead the difficulty increased by 1.29% on Wednesday. On the same day, at block height 739,928, Bitcoin’s hashrate tapped an all-time high (ATH) reaching 292.02 exahash per second (EH/s).
Bitcoin’s Blockchain Secured by Close to Three Hundred Quintillion Hashes per Second
This week, the Bitcoin network has never been more powerful as the protocol’s computational processing power reached a lifetime high on Wednesday. The network reached 292.02 EH/s, which is close to the 300 EH/s mark for the first-time.
On May 2, 2022, Bitcoin block height was 734,577. At 275.01 EH/s it hit the final hashrate ATH. The jump to 292.02 EH/s, 37 days later than May 2, was an approximate 6.18% increase over the ATH. Only 2.73% separated the ATH from 300 EH/s, or 0.3 zettahash each second (ZH/s), Wednesday’s ATH was still within reach.
Because the hashrate has been so high, the difficulty adjust algorithm (DAA), that was meant to decrease it by 0.51% has actually increased by 1.29%. The difficulty level was supposed to drop by 0.5% three days earlier, on June 7.
Despite the 1.29% decrease, the network’s difficulty is still less than the ATH 31.25 trillion on May 10, 2022. The network’s difficulty is currently at 30.28 trillion and it is expected to remain at that metric until the retarget date on June 21. That’s roughly ten days from now or around 1,600 blocks away until the next DAA change.
At 292 exahash per second, two hundred ninety-two quintillion hashes per second (H/s) were dedicated to the Bitcoin blockchain’s security on Wednesday. Foundry USA is the most popular mining pool with 52.42 EH/s and fifty-two quadrillion hashes per second (or 472 exahash/s).
Foundry found 109 Bitcoin block reward rewards from 475 blocks that were mined in the last 72 hours. Antpool’s hashrate has hovered around 35.11 EH/s or thirty-five quintillion one hundred ten quadrillion H/s. Antpool discovered 73 of 475 blocks, while F2pool found 32.EH/s. F2pool also found 67 blocks in the past three days.
The next difficulty level will be determined by the current hashrate speed and how long it takes to mine 1,600 more blocks. Currently, using today’s metrics, the difficulty is expected to increase by 1.52% from the current position, but that estimate is likely to change.
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