Bitcoin miners caught a small break late Sunday evening (ET) after the network’s mining difficulty dropped 0.20% lower than the difficulty rating two weeks prior. This is the first decrease in mining difficulty for four weeks. The metric was changed from 36.84 trillion and 36.76 trillion.
Bitcoin Miners Catch a Miniscule Break as the Network’s Difficulty Shrinks by 0.20%
Bitcoin’s mining difficulty is still extremely high in comparison to the height it was in mid-August 2022. For instance, on Aug. 17, 2022, just before the year’s third largest difficulty increase, the difficulty was around 28.35 trillion. The difficulty is now 36.76 billion, which means it’s more than 29% easier to locate a Bitcoin (BTC), block than in mid August.
The 0.20% decrease is not a significant one, but it’s still useful to miners against the rising difficulty. At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s total hashrate is around 269.86 exahash per second (EH/s). Records show that BTC’s total hashrate lifetime high (321.15 EH/s) recorded on Oct. 5, 2022, has been broken by a new record recorded on Oct. 31. On that day, at block height 761,186, Bitcoin’s total hashrate reached an all-time high at 327.35 EH/s.
The reason why the network’s mining difficulty dropped is because block generation time has slowed down. As the current block generation time takes about 10 minutes, the intervals for blocks are now just under 10 minutes. It is possible that another difficulty reduction could occur, at the very least, when it changes on November 20, 2022. But, miners can still expect a great deal to change within two weeks, or 2106 blocks. The recent reduction of 0.20% helps them.
Bitmain’s S19 XP Hydro Bitcoin Mining Rig With 255 Terahash Becomes the Most Profitable Mining Device
Three-day statistics show Foundry USA leads the pack when it comes to today’s top bitcoin mining pools. Foundry holds 31.47% global hashrate and has 84.07 EH/s of SHA256 dedicated to Bitcoin chain. Antpool, F2pool Binance Pool, Viabtc, and Binance Pool are the next three. With 10.59 EH/s, or 3.96% global hashrate, the sixth-largest pool is held by stealth miners or unknown hashrate.
Bitcoin’s fourth block subsidy epoch or the next block reward halving is expected to happen between April 13 and April 22, 2024, after more than 77,000 BTC blocks are mined. The Bitmain Antminer S19XP Hyd is currently the most profitable bitcoin mining device. With 255 terahashes per second (TH/s). Bitmain’s model earns $11.01 per hour at an extremely high electricity cost of $0.12/kWh. Antminer S19XPHYD would see electrical costs drop to $0.07 perkWh. Earn an estimated $15.51 every day in profits
What do you think about Bitcoin’s network difficulty slipping by 0.20% this week? Comment below and let us know how you feel about current conditions in bitcoin mining ecosystem.
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