Bitcoin difficulty decreased by 0.49% on February 12, 2023, after a sustained all-time high of 39.35 trillion over the previous two weeks (2016 blocks). The decrease in difficulty offers a brief respite for bitcoin miners, after the network posted a 14.94% increase in the past month.
Bitcoin difficulty drops 0.49% less; The top five mining pools continue to dominate the majority of the global hashrate
At the time of writing, the Bitcoin hashrate is advancing to 289.14 exhash per second (EH/s) after a 0.49% decrease on block height difficulty 776,160. The difficulty of the network has been operating at approximately 39,350,942,467,772 hashes for the past 2,016 blocks, or two weeks. With the recent 0.49% decrease in difficulty, the network difficulty will now be set to 39.16 trillion hashes for the next two weeks.
Since the last difficulty change, block times (the intervals between mined blocks) have been from 10 minutes, 7 seconds to about 11 minutes, 14 seconds at length. Bitcoin’s next difficulty target change is scheduled for around February 26, 2023. The average hashrate over the last 2016 blocks was about 280.6 exahash per second (EH/s), and the average block time for those blocks was 10 minutes and 2 seconds.
during the past three days, Foundry USA has been the top mining pool with 33.26% of the global hashrate, or roughly 95.89 exahash per second (EH/s) of hashpower. Foundry is followed by Antpool with 15.97% of the global hashrate and Binance Pool with 15.54% of the computing power. group f2 (14.22%) and viabtc (9.41%) are the following, respectively. There are approximately 12 known mining pools today, with the top five controlling 88.4% of the global hashrate.
According to macromicro.me Statisticsthe cost of producing bitcoin (BTC) is still higher than its current spot market value. Macromicro.me calculates its estimates based on daily bitcoin issuance and electricity consumption data provided by the University of Cambridge. Currently, the average cost of mining a single bitcoin is around $24,119, while its spot market value is about $21,901 per unit.
What impact will the recent decrease in difficulty have on the future of Bitcoin mining and the distribution of hashing power among mining pools over the next two weeks? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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