Bitcoin mining difficulty, the measure of how hard it is to find a new block and add it to the blockchain, will increase significantly on January 15, 2023, based on current estimates. At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty appears to be on track for a 10% increase, from 34.09 billion to an all-time high of 37.57 billion.
Upcoming difficulty retarget to increase hashrate requirements
The leading cryptocurrency network, Bitcoin (BTC), will experience an unprecedented three-day difficulty increase around January 15, 2023. At the time of writing, the network hash rate is 268.79 exahash per second (EH/s) and Blockchain power computational capacity reached an all-time high on January 6, 2023. On that day, at block 770,709, the network hash power reached 361.20 EH/s.
Bitcoin block times, also known as block intervals, have been between 8 minutes, 52 secondsY 9 minutes, 6 seconds at length. The block interval is the average amount of time it takes for a new block to be added to the blockchain, and the difficulty of the network is designed to keep the block time to around 10 minutes per block.
The actual time between blocks may vary from this average, and from the last difficulty change on January 2, 2023, at block height 770.112, the block intervals have been faster. For this reason, the difficulty retarget on January 15 will mean a notable increase, and a rise that has not been registered since October 2022.
Foundry USA and Antpool control almost half of the global Bitcoin hashrate
As of writing, and until the next difficulty change, BTCThe difficulty of the network is approximately 34.09 trillion. This means that, on average, it takes 34 trillion hashes (or attempts) to find a valid code. BTC block and add it to the blockchain. Currently, analysis sites detail that the next Bitcoin difficulty change is expected to increase by 10.1% a 10.21% In three days.
At the highest estimate, the difficulty would reach an all-time high of 37.57 trillion, and bitcoin miners would need to exert 37.57 trillion hashes to find a block on the Bitcoin blockchain. Currently, Foundry USA is the top mining pool for the last three days, with 29.57% of the global hashrate. Foundry is followed by Antpool (19.36%), F2pool (16.38%), Binance Pool (8.72%), Viabtc (8.30%), and Braiins Pool (3.40%), respectively. Between Foundry and Antpool, the two groups currently control 48.93% of the total network hashrate.
What do you think about the upcoming Bitcoin mining difficulty change? Share your thoughts and predictions in the comments below.
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