Wednesday saw the second largest increase in Bitcoin mining difficulty in 2022, at 9.26%. As of this update, the difficulty of finding a Bitcoin block reward has increased by a total of 31.63% since August 4, 2022.
With a 9.26% increase, this is the second largest increase in Bitcoin difficulty this year’s metric has recorded.
On August 31st, Bitcoin’s (BTC) difficulty was raised for the third time this month, by a total of 9.26%. The difficulty adjustment occurred at block height 751,968, and the 9.26% increase is the second largest thus far this year. On January 20, 2022, block height 719,712 saw the most increase in 2022. This occurred 223 days ago.
The current difficulty of 30.98 trillion is only 0.27 away from the ATH of the network, which was reached on May 10, 2022, at 31.25 trillion. Miners have taken a hit because to the decreased USD value of bitcoin and the 9.26% difficulty increase. The latest three difficulty adjustments have made it 11.63 percent more difficult to find a Bitcoin block reward before August 4.
The mining difficulty of Bitcoin increased by 1.74% on August 4 at block height 747,936, then by another 0.63% two weeks later. Bitcoin.com News revealed five days ago that the community was talking about the potential of the difficulty significantly increasing. A “notable difficulty jump” was anticipated on August 25th, according to a tweet from Blocksbridge Consulting.
Additionally, Bitcoin’s hashrate skyrocketed to 282.21 exahash per second (EH/s) in the same week. When compared to the ATH set on June 8, 2022 at a block height of 739,928, the hashrate was approximately 3.35 percent lower. As this is being written, the hashrate for Bitcoin is comfortably at 236.33 EH/s.
Miners seem unfazed by the recent difficulty spike and the drop in Bitcoin’s value, as the hashrate has remained consistently high. If 2,016 Bitcoin block rewards are discovered ‘too soon,’ the difficulty rises, and if the interval between block discoveries is ‘too slow,’ the difficulty falls.
Comparison of the Typical Block Size to the Present Hash Rate There Is a Good Chance of Yet Another Raise
Because Satoshi Nakamoto’s design for the DAA system is based on a Poisson distribution, a new Bitcoin block is discovered approximately every ten minutes. If the next 2,016 Bitcoin block rewards are discovered ‘too fast,’ the next difficulty increase is projected to be around 7:59 minutes from now.
