Bitcoin miners got a small break on March 3, after the network’s mining difficulty shifted downward for the first time since November 28, 2021. Bitcoin’s hashrate has remained high meandering between 180 to 220 exahash per second (EH/s) over the last week, but the leading crypto asset’s price has shed more than 3% during the last 24 hours.
Bitcoin difficulty drops to 1.49% after Block Height 725.760
Bitcoin’s hashrate remains high and at the time of writing, the network’s processing power is around 189.56 EH/s or 189,564,917,409,516,800,000 hashes per second (H/s). After a slight drop in hashpower five days ago, the hashrate has continued to coast at 180-220 EH/s for seven days.
Estimates at the time predicted that mining difficulty would rise by 1.18%, to 27.64 trillion. But, on March 3, 2022 the difficulty at block height 725.760 decreased, which was the first decrease in several months. The network’s last miner difficulty drop was actually recorded on November 28th, 2021. This brought the difficulty to 27.55 Trillion.
While it’s not much of a change, it does make it 1.49% less difficult for a bitcoin miner to find a BTC block subsidy often referred to as a block reward. Before the downshift, there were six consecutive mining difficulty rises, which made finding block reward opportunities for participants in the mining community much more difficult.
The 1.49% difficulty drop on March 3 is helpful but at the same time, 24-hour statistics show at the time of writing, BTC’s value has lost 3.8% against the U.S. dollar. Bitcoin’s (BTC) current fiat value makes Bitmain’s Antminer S19 Pro (110 TH/s), Microbt’s Whatsminer M30S++ (112 TH/s), and Canaan’s Avalonminer 1246 (90 TH/s) profits drop lower than last week.
Mining rigs like the one mentioned make $8.24-12.75 per day and pay $0.12/kWh for electricity. Mining devices like Innosilicon’s T2 Turbo+ (32 TH/s) mining rig, Bitmain’s Antminer S11 (20.5 TH/s) are not seeing a profit today, with current BTC prices and paying $0.12 per kWh.
Foundry USA was the number one mining pool worldwide for the past three days with approximately 18.41% of global hashrate. Foundry USA is a U.S. mining operations that has been an outstanding miner over the last week. It has also received 79 block reward in the last 72 hours.
The second-largest mining pool over the three-day span is Bitmain’s Antpool with 15.62% of the global hashrate. Antpool discovered 67 blocks over 72 hours and leveraged 30.95 EH/s in processing power. There are approximately 11 known BTC mining pools today, while unknown hashrate commands 1.64% of the world’s BTC hashpower, with around 3.24 EH/s of SHA256 processing power.
What do you think about Bitcoin’s mining difficulty dropping 1.49% lower? Comment below and let us know how you feel about the subject.
Credits for the imageShutterstock. Pixabay. Wiki Commons
DisclaimerInformational: It does not constitute an offer, solicitation, or recommendation of any company, products or services. Bitcoin.com doesn’t offer investment, tax or legal advice. This article does not contain any information, products, or advice that can be used to cause or alleged result in any kind of damage.