Bitcoin mining difficulty reached an all-time high (ATH) on February 24, 2023, at the height of block #778,176, reaching 43.05 trillion hashes and surpassing the 40 trillion mark for the first time. Network difficulty increased by 9.95%, which is the second-highest increase this year as Bitcoin has seen a combined 24.89% increase over the last 60 days.
Network participants face longer block times after recent difficulty change
It has never been as difficult to mine bitcoin (BTC) as it is today, as miners experienced a 9.95% difficulty increase at the height of block #778,176. Now and for the next two weeks, or approximately 2016 blocks, the difficulty will be 43.05 trillion. The average network hashrate over the last 2016 blocks was approximately 305.8 exahash per second (EH/s).
Friday’s 9.95% increase was the second biggest jump in difficulty this year, as the biggest was recorded on January 15, 2023, at the height of block #772,128. At that time, the difficulty increased by 10.26% more than the previous difficulty metric. The next difficulty change should take place around March 9, 2023, and currently, block times have been much longer than the average 10 minutes.
The average block time before the difficulty change on Friday was around 9 minutes and 11 seconds, and today, block times are between 12 and 14 minutes. The longer block time shows that the recent difficulty change has slowed down miners. On Saturday, February 25, 2023, the network’s global hashrate is falling by values between 294.91 EH/s and 238.44 EH/s.
As of Saturday, the largest mining pool in terms of hashrate is Foundry USA with 103.18 EH/s or 34.88% of the network’s total hashpower. Foundry is followed by Antpool, which commands 15.81% of the total or approximately 46.77 EH/s of hashpower. Foundry and Antpool are followed by F2pool, Binance Pool and Viabtc respectively. Over the past three days, 13 known pools and 15.13 EH/s of unknown hashpower have collectively discovered 430 blocks in total.
What do you think of Bitcoin’s network difficulty rising to a new ATH above the 40 trillion mark? Let us know what you think about this in the comments section below.
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