Bitcoin’s Mining Difficulty Continues to Rise: 37% More Difficult to Mine BTC Than 3 Months Ago, Difficulty Nears 20 Trillion
Bitcoin’s hashrate has been climbing steadily over the last three months and rose more than 40% after the network’s hashpower was below 90 exahash per second (EH/s) on July 5. The trend has led to a consecutive run of five bitcoin mining difficulty accruals with another increase expected during the next transition. Hashrate Steadily Increases, Antpool Commands Top Position, Unknown Hashrate Returns
The overall Bitcoin (BTC) hashrate has been slowly but steadily rising higher during the last 90 days. The network’s current processing power is coasting along at 130 EH/s, and three months ago the hashpower was 40% lower than today.
In the last 24 hours, Antpool has been the top mining pool dedicating hashrate to the BTC network with 29.7 EH/s or 20.47% of the global hashrate. Antpool is followed by F2pool with 23.58 EH/s or 16.2% of BTC’s overall hashrate, and Pooling captures 13.2% of the network or 19.2 EH/s.
Other top pools dedicating vast amounts of hashrate to the BTC network include operations such as Viabtc, Foundry USA, and Btc.com, respectively. While Bitcoin.com News reported that the quantity of unknown hashrate had disappeared during the last hashrate report, a small fraction of stealth mining has recently returned. 1.86 EH/s or 1.28% of the global hashrate currently belongs to unknown mining entities. Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Expected to Increase for 6th Time in a Row
As BTC’s hashrate has increased and mining pools have been shuffling around, the network’s mining difficulty is expected to increase for the sixth time in a row. At the time of writing, it is expected to increase by 2.99% to 19.57 trillion, getting awfully close to the 20 trillion mark. Currently, BTC’s mining difficulty is 19.00 trillion. A 2.99% increase will mean it will be 37% more difficult to mine bitcoin than it was on July 30.
The upcoming increase is similar in size to the difficulty increase two weeks ago which was roughly 3.16%. The biggest jump in the consecutive run of difficulty rises was on August 25, at block height 697,536, when the difficulty jumped approximately 13.24%. The consecutive run of mining difficulty increases follows the run of five consecutive difficulty adjustment algorithm decreases.
What do you think about Bitcoin’s hashrate this week and the upcoming mining difficulty increase? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below. Kyrgyzstan Raises Electricity Rates for Cryptocurrency Miners MINING | 2 days ago Crypto Miners Blamed for Power Supply Deficit in Kazakhstan, Government Mulls Restrictions MINING | 2 days ago Tags in this story Block time, BTC difficulty, BTC.com, chinese miners, difficulty, Exahash, Hahspower, Hashpower, Hashrate, largest drop, Largest Drop in History, Mempool, Mining Operations, Mining Pools, network difficulty, Overall Hashrate, SHA256 Hashrate
Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, btc.com, Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article. Read disclaimerShow comments