Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Surpasses 100 Trillion Mark
Date: 2024-11-06 Author: Gabriel Deangelo Categories: CRYPTO PAYMENTS
This week, according to blockchain explorer Mempool, the difficulty adjustment was recorded at block 868,896 and reached a new high of 101.7 trillion, surpassing the previous peak of 95.7 trillion set just two weeks earlier. Bitcoin mining difficulty is not expressed in specific units, but is a relative indicator of how difficult it is to mine a new block at the moment.
The automatic difficulty adjustment occurs every 2016 blocks, approximately once every two weeks, to ensure that the average block time is around 10 minutes, regardless of the number of miners on the network. Increased difficulty means that miners need more computing power and energy to mine each new block.
The record difficulty increase was made possible by the increased network hashrate, which reached an average of 730 EH/s. The increased hashrate increases the cost of Bitcoin mining. According to CoinShares data for the third quarter, the average cost of mining one Bitcoin is about $49,500, which is significantly lower than the current market price of the cryptocurrency, which is trading near the $70,000 mark.
