Bitcoin mining difficulty rises 2.18% to record amid increasing competition among miners

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty level rose 2.18% on Wednesday to an all-time high. The level changes every two weeks and measures the additional computing power a miner has to use to verify transactions on a block. A higher difficulty indicates it is more competitive to mine Bitcoin, reducing profit. The network’s hashrate also increased to a record high. 

See related article: What’s next for crypto miners after US debt ceiling deal?

Fast facts

• The mining difficulty reading came in at 52.35 trillion at block height 794,304 in Wednesday’s adjustment. That follows a 3.4% rise in the previous adjustment on June 1, according to data from BTC.com.
• The difficulty of mining Bitcoin typically rises when more miners are active, which increases the competition for rewards in Bitcoin in return for validating transactions on the network. The higher the difficulty, the less chance a miner has to secure an entire block on the chain, which in turn can reduce a miner’s profitability.
• Mining difficulty adjustments are correlated to changes in hashrate, the level of computing power used for mining.
• “In short, difficulty follows hashrate up or down, and hashrate is driven by the overall profitability of building and operating bitcoin data centers,” Andrew Webber, chief of Digital Power Optimization that works with power producers to deploy Bitcoin mining operations, told Forkast in an emailed response earlier this month. “If Bitcoin spot price goes higher, it means larger profits for miners.”
• Bitcoin’s hashrate was at around 392.6 exahashes per second on Wednesday, an increase from the 375.4 exahashes recorded during the previous adjustment on June 1, data from Blockchain.com shows.
• Bitcoin fell 3.63% to US$25,045 in the last 24 hours to 11:10 a.m. in Hong Kong, but it was up about 51% so far this year, according to data from CoinMarketCap. The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization lost 5.01% in value over the past seven days.

See related article: Tether stablecoin issuer taps Uruguay for Bitcoin mining using renewable energy