Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Rises by 1.5%

Following a recent adjustment, the difficulty level for mining the first cryptocurrency increased by 1.48% to 84.38 T.

This was due to an average hashrate of 705 EH/s during the period since the previous adjustment, resulting in a decrease in block interval to approximately 8.5 minutes instead of the usual 10 minutes. However, this increase was not enough to offset the almost 6% drop in difficulty following the halving.

Glassnode reported that the network’s 7-day moving average hashing power experienced a peak at 649.7 EH/s before the halving, and then decreased to 575.3 EH/s before recovering to 605 EH/s at the time of writing.

Experts had previously predicted that miners would shut down some equipment after the halving, as it would no longer be cost-effective. Their estimates ranged from 15-20% to 5-10%, with the latter being closer to the actual outcome.