The Bitcoin mining difficulty adjusted to block height 794,304 on Wednesday, June 14, bringing the network’s entire average hashrate to 383.87 EH/s.
Data available at BTC.com shows that the latest adjustment happened at block time 11:27:42. The new adjustment in the mining difficulty of the cryptocurrency is a 2.18% increase from the last adjustment, which happened on May 31 and brought the average hashrate of the entire network to 366.47 EH/s. The latest adjustment has brought the average block emission time to 9 minutes, 48 seconds. It is the third consecutive increase in difficulty since May 18, 2023.
Bitcoin mining difficulty explained
Blockchain.com explained mining difficulty, saying,
“The difficulty is a measure of how difficult it is to mine a Bitcoin block, or in more technical terms, to find a hash below a given target. A high difficulty level means that it will take more computing power to mine the same number of blocks, making the network more secure against attacks. The difficulty adjustment is directly related to the total estimated mining power estimated in the “hashrate” chart. The difficulty is adjusted every 2016 blocks (every 2 weeks approximately) so that the average time between each block remains 10 minutes.”
Larger mining operations see profit
With the increasing popularity of cryptocurrencies, bitcoin mining has become more difficult. As miners compete for rewards in an effort to acquire bitcoins, they have resorted to using special state-of-the-art computing equipment and strategies that require a lot of energy. This increased competition amongst miners causes difficulty levels associated with mining Bitcoins to increase, which provides greater network security but makes it harder for people to make profits as returns are lower than before.
This increased barrier of entry can make bitcoin mining less profitable if done on an individual scale, but some larger operations may still see profits due to its potential rewards.
A rare occurrence
On March 11, after an adjustment in the mining difficulty of Bitcoin, BTC.com stated,
“Bitcoin‘s difficulty just hit an all-time high of 43.55 T. New #BTC hashrate constantly joins the networks, making average block time faster, thus contributing to another significant gain on the difficulty.”
We reported that a solo miner with one of the mining pools got extremely lucky and mined a Bitcoin block. This is a very rare occurrence, which computing experts say can happen once every 5,000 years.
The next change in the mining difficulty of Bitcoin is expected in 13 days and 1 hour, as seen from BTC.com data. This would be a 1.05% increase from the current difficulty of 52.35 T and would bring the mining difficulty to 52.90 Terahash.
