Bitcoin Difficulty Surges 4.68%, Taps New All-Time High; Metric Set to Surpass 40 Trillion

Bitcoin Difficulty Surges 4.68%, Taps New All-Time High; Metric Set to Surpass 40 Trillion

The Bitcoin blockchain recorded another difficulty increase on Sunday, Jan. 29, 2023, at block height 774,144. The network’s difficulty increased by 4.68%, from 37.59 trillion to an all-time high of 39.35 trillion. Bitcoin Difficulty Reaches New All-Time High as Mining Gets Tougher

Bitcoin’s difficulty reached another all-time high, surpassing the record set two weeks ago, after rising 4.68% on Sunday. The increase occurred at block height 774,144, at 6:10 a.m. (UTC). The difficulty is now at 39.35 trillion, close to surpassing 40 trillion. The next adjustment is due Feb. 11, 2023.

The rise makes mining blocks more difficult, following a 4.68% jump after the 10.26% increase on Jan. 15, 2023. Jan. 29 statistics show a hashrate of 279.7 exahash per second (EH/s) over the last 2,016 blocks, currently at 283.55 EH/s dedicated to the Bitcoin blockchain.

Statistics from macromicro.me on Jan. 28, 2023, estimate the cost of BTC production at $21,176 per unit. On Jan. 29, the spot price was $23,584. With spot prices higher than the cost of production, bitcoin (BTC) miners have recouped some losses from the end of 2022.

Pool distribution calculated by blocks discovered shows Foundry USA as the top mining pool with 101.47 EH/s, equating to 34.89% of the network’s hashpower. Antpool has 57.54 EH/s, or 19.79% of the total network hashrate. F2pool, Binance Pool, Viabtc, Btc.com, and Braiins Pool follow Foundry and Antpool, respectively.

With the increase in difficulty, block intervals, or the time between each BTC block, have been about 9:02 to 9:38 minutes. This is slower than the recent 8:54 to 9:31 minutes recorded two days ago, but still faster than the 10-minute average. Tags in this story 2023, All time high, Antpool, Bitcoin, Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin mining, Bitcoin network, Block Height, block intervals, Block time, block times, BTC, BTC Mining, BTC network, BTC/USD, computational power, crypto network, difficulty, Exahash, Feb 11, Foundry USA, Hashes, Hashpower, Hashrate, hashrate ATH, Macromicro.me, mining, mining block, Mining Difficulty, Mining Pools, network, network hashrate, participating miner, per second, protocol, SHA256, Spot Prices, Statistics, ten-minute average, time between blocks, UTC

What impact do you think the increasing difficulty of the Bitcoin network will have on miners and the cryptocurrency industry as a whole? Share your thoughts in the comments section below. Jamie Redman

Jamie Redman is the News Lead at Bitcoin.com News and a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open-source code, and decentralized applications. Since September 2015, Redman has written more than 6,000 articles for Bitcoin.com News about the disruptive protocols emerging today. Ban on Crypto Mining in Residential Areas Proposed in Russia MINING | 2 days ago Bitcoin Difficulty Set to Rise 3.82% to All-Time High of 39 Trillion Following Recent Increase MINING | 2 days ago

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