The bitcoin mining difficulty is expected to see its largest increase in over seven months later this week.
This comes as the hash rate has surged by almost 30% in the past two weeks.
Largest Increase in Mining Difficulty Since January?
The bitcoin mining difficulty adjustment is an essential part of the world’s largest blockchain that makes it either easier or harder for miners to do their job depending on the number of entities plugged into the network.
Essentially, the more miners work on the network, the harder it gets for them to get the rewards, and vice-versa. This adjustment process happens every 2,016 blocks (roughly two weeks) and makes sure that the block production remains the same, no matter how many miners are active.
Over the past several years, it has typically declined during the summer months since quite a few countries, such as Iran, ban mining in this period due to the high electricity demand.
This happened once again in 2022, and the bitcoin network saw several consecutive negative adjustments in the middle of the summer. The largest one was on July 21 (-5.01%) – a level not seen in over a year.
The trend changed at the start of August with a 1.74% positive increase, followed by another one (0.63%) two weeks later.
The next adjustment is scheduled to take place in less than 48 hours, and data from BTC.com shows that it should be an increase of just over 7%. This would be the largest one since January 21 (9.32%).
BTC Hash Rate Recovers, too
The mining difficulty and the hash rate typically move in tandem. Whenever the hash rate declines, so does the mining difficulty trying to cope with that change.
As such, it’s no wonder that the hash rate had dropped quite a bit in the past few months. According to BitInfoCharts, the metric plummeted from an all-time high of over 250Ehash/s in early June to 170Ehash/s two months later (the start of August).
Since then, though, the hash rate has increased by about 30% and currently sits just shy of 230Ehash/s, meaning that it’s inches away from tapping a new ATH.
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