Bitcoin mining difficulty hit a record high on October 10. After the problem dropped on September 27, the network’s mining difficulty rose by 13.55% to a block height of 758,016. The highest difficulty increase was recorded this year.
More Difficult to Discover a Bitcoin Block Reward
Five days ago, Bitcoin’s hash rate hit an all-time high (ATH). It hit 321.15 exahash per second (EH/s) at a block height of 757,214. The hash rate was much faster because the rate at which blocks were generated was less than 10 minutes per interval. After 2,016 blocks have been mined, if blocks are mined faster than average, the network difficulty adjustment will be readjusted to increase the difficulty. Finding a block too late in the 2,016-block period (2 weeks) reduces the problem.
After tapping hash rate ATH on October 5, the block time was faster than the 10-minute average. On October 9, the block interval increased by a factor of 7.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin block generation time is around 8.7 minutes, even after the last difficulty increase. After the difficulty change, the current hash rate is around 244.03 EH/s. The 13.55% increase in difficulty is notable. According to records, the second largest increase (9.32%) occurred on January 20, 2022, making it the most significant addition to date.
The recent surge has pushed network difficulty above the all-time high of 32.05 trillion sets on September 13. Today, the current problem is 35.61 trillion. It will remain at this parameter for the next two weeks. Foundry USA is the top mining pool as of Monday, October 10. It currently controls 29.22% of the network’s total hash rate. Foundry has reserved about 75.87 EH/s for its BTC blockchain. The pool found 149 of the 510 blocks in the last three days.
Mining Pools become Less Profitable in 2022
Antpool, the second largest mining pool, has 20.39% of the global hash rate, which is about 52.95 EH/s. The mining pool, managed by Bitmain, discovered 104 of the 510 blocks in the last three days. Statistics show that there are currently 12 mining pools that provide SHA256 hash rates for the BTC chain. The Unknown Hashrate, aka Stealth Miner order, is at 5.09 EH/s, or 1.96% of the total hash rate recorded Monday. Out of 510 blocks in 72 hours, ten-block rewards were found with an unknown hash rate.
Bitcoin’s price is so low that the network’s mining pool is not profitable; it has had the most significant difficulty in ratings over the past 13 years. Before the last change, the mining revenue per petahash per second (PH/s) was around $80/PH/s. Now it is $70/PH/s. Only three mining rig models are profitable at $0.12 per kilowatt hour (kWh). The electricity bill is now $0.07 per kWh, with about 35 mining rig models currently good.
The mining difficulty adjustment is made by comparing the typical time it takes to find a 2,016-block transaction on the Bitcoin network to the time it takes to find the last 2,016 blocks. Note that the accepted block time is 10 minutes. The expected time to mine the 2016 block is 20,160 minutes (i.e., 2016 x 10 minutes).
