Bitcoin Mining Gets Tougher as Network Difficulty Reaches New Peak – Bitcoin’s difficulty reached an all-time high at block height 790,272, surging by 3.22% on Thursday. The network’s difficulty now stands impressively at 49.55 trillion, just 0.90% away from the significant milestone of 50 trillion hashes. Consequently, this makes it the most challenging period ever encountered for miners to discover a block reward.
In a remarkable development, Bitcoin’s network difficulty experienced a substantial 3.22% increase, soaring to an unparalleled height of 49.55 trillion this year. The network’s difficulty serves as a measure of the level of complexity in finding a hash value that satisfies the necessary criteria for adding a new block to the Bitcoin blockchain.
People Also Read: US Senators Reintroduce ‘Accountability for Cryptocurrency in El Salvador (ACES) Act’
Notably, this recent surge in difficulty followed a previous decline of 1.45% at block height 788,256, where the chain’s difficulty remained steady at 48.01 trillion for approximately two weeks. Currently, Bitcoin miners are directing an impressive 363.84 exahash per second (EH/s) towards the Bitcoin blockchain.
The recent increase of 3.22% occurred at block height 790,272, and the next adjustment in difficulty is expected to take place around May 31, 2023. Recent data indicates that block intervals are slightly longer than the typical ten-minute average. Specifically, at 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time on May 18, the intervals ranged from ten minutes and 12 seconds to ten minutes and 33 seconds.
Over the past 72 hours, the prominent bitcoin mining pool has been Foundry USA, which has maintained a hashrate of approximately 109.04 EH/s. This represents around 30.02% of the total hashrate of the Bitcoin network during that period. Foundry is followed by Antpool with 77.77 EH/s, F2pool with 54.52 EH/s, and Viabtc with 40.89 EH/s.
Binance Pool, ranking as the fifth largest in terms of hashrate, currently possesses approximately 27.26 EH/s. Despite the rising difficulty, Bitcoin miners have managed to sustain a substantial hashrate by allocating more computational power to the network.
People Also Read: New York Attorney General Seeks New Crypto Powers for State Regulators
Although BTC prices currently remain below the $27,000 range, they are considerably higher compared to the value of $16,500 that BTC traded for on December 31, 2022. Moreover, alongside the all-time high (ATH) difficulty reached on May 18, the network’s hashrate also achieved an ATH on May 2, reaching 491.15 exahash per second (EH/s) at block height 787,895.