On March 23, 2023, bitcoin experienced another difficulty spike, following two previous spikes in the past month, jumping a further 7.56%. Currently, bitcoin miners have not been deterred by the increases, as the network hashrate has been advancing at 346 exhash per second (EH/s).
Bitcoin hashrate remains high despite recent difficulty increase of 7.56%
At the time of writing, there are over 1,700 blocks left until the next difficulty target change on April 5, 2023. Despite the difficulty increase on March 23 at the height of block 782,208, the hashrate is still high and the intervals block are even faster than 10 minutes. average. The April 5 change is expected to be about 6.9% highersince the block times have been between nine minutes and 21 seconds and nine minutes and 14 seconds.
The increase at the height of block 782,208 was 7.56% higher than the difficulty during the previous two weeks. Prior to that, on February 24, 2023, at block 778,176, the difficulty increased by 9.95%, and on March 10, 2023, at block 780,192, the difficulty increased by 1. 16%. This means that over the past six weeks, bitcoin miners have dealt with three consecutive difficulty increases totaling 18.67%.
Currently, the difficulty is 46.84 billion and it is only 3.16 billion hashes away from reaching 50 billion for the first time. If the current estimated increase of 6.9% comes to fruition, by April 5, 2023, the difficulty could reach 53.74 trillion. Statistics show that March bitcoin mining revenue may end up slightly below February’s $613 million. Incomplete monthly data shows that miners have raised $561 million since March 1.
In the last three days, 488 BTC Blocks were mined and Foundry USA discovered 149 of them. Foundry’s three-day hash rate is around 105.71 EH/s or 30.53% of the total hash rate of the Bitcoin network. Foundry is followed by Antpool (73.78 EH/s), F2pool (51.79 EH/s), Binance Pool (34.76 EH/s) and Viabtc (31.93 EH/s). Together, Foundry and Antpool control 51.84% of the global Bitcoin hashrate.
What do you think the future holds for bitcoin miners as the difficulty continues to rise? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
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