Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Reaches Record High Ahead of Anticipated Halving Event
Summary:
As the historic Bitcoin (BTC) halving event approaches, mining difficulty continues to surge, hitting a new all-time high of 86.4 trillion. The difficulty level, which adjusts roughly every two weeks, reflects the complexity and time required to mine a new Bitcoin block. Concurrently, the BTC blockchain hash rate, a measure of miners' computational power, has also increased significantly. However, analysts predict a potential slump in the BTC hash rate following the Bitcoin halving event in 2024, caused by miners turning off their rigs due to reduced efficiency.
Bitcoin's (BTC) mining difficulty continues to surge, in anticipation of the forthcoming historic halving event that is set to decrease mining rewards by half. The difficulty involved in Bitcoin mining has witnessed a further hike leading up to the imminent BTC halving, setting a fresh record at 86.4 trillion, as per data from BTC.com, as of April 10. This marks a 3.4% increment from the prior figure of 83 trillion outlined on March 28. These difficulty shifts are deemed to be the final ones before the halving event. Based on BTC.com, another mining complexity adjustment for Bitcoin will be due in 13 days, around April 24. For now, Bitcoin's halving remains on course to happen in eight days or April 19 according to CoinMarketCap's data. The mining difficulty reflects the complexity and time required to mine a new Bitcoin block or solve complex mathematical problems under Bitcoin’s proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm. Adjustments in BTC mining complexity occur after every 2,016 blocks, translating to approximately a fortnight, following Bitcoin's embedded ability to self-regulate the complexity to maintain a targeted block time of 10 minutes. The difficulty level is highly influenced by the Bitcoin blockchain hash rate, a metric that gauges miners' computational power to generate new bitcoins. With Bitcoin's mining complexity on the rise, the BTC hash rate has also witnessed amplified growth recently. It surged from roughly 619 exahashes per second (EH/s) on March 28, to reach 696 EH/s by April 10, per BTC.com data. The BTC hash rate reached a never-before-seen high on March 24, registering at 727.9 EH/s, as per data from BitInfoCharts. Nevertheless, some analysts speculate that post the Bitcoin halving event for 2024, it is likely that the BTC hash rate might experience a slump. Mining analysts at Galaxy forecast that post-halving, as many as 20% of the present Bitcoin hash rate may cease operations. This would entail many miners shutting down their operations owing to reduced efficacy. They estimate that by the close of 2023, more than 70% of the Bitcoin hash rate was generated by eight Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) miner models.
Published At
4/11/2024 12:50:26 PM
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