Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Set for a Sharp Rise While Profitability Drops
Why Trust Cryptonews
Bitcoin (BTC) mining difficultly is set to see a significant increase in less than a day, seeing it move a step closer to its May all-time high (ATH) at a time when competition among miners is growing while profitability is decreasing.
It is currently estimated by the mining pool BTC.com that Bitcoin mining difficulty, or the measure of how hard it is to compete for mining rewards, will rise 6.49% on Saturday. This would be the fourth-highest increase since the ATH.
Additionally, it would bring the difficulty up to the 23.78 T level – closer to the mid-May ATH of 25.05 T.
This rise follows a decrease that was relatively small, but significant, given that it broke the longest gain streak seen since 2018.
Meanwhile, hashrate, or the computational power of the network, has been on the rise as well since the previous difficulty adjustment. While sitting at 156.06 E on November 28, the 7-day moving average jumped to 180.98 E recorded on December 9 – a nearly 16% increase in less than two weeks.
Bitcoin mining profitability has taken the exact opposite direction. It dropped 9.4% in the same timeframe as the price of BTC dropped almost 20% in the past two weeks.
The mining difficulty of Bitcoin is adjusted around every two weeks (or more precisely, every 2016 blocks) to maintain the normal 10-minute block time. The 7-day moving average block time on December 9 was 8.8 minutes.
That said, according to ByteTree, in the past week, miners have held more of their newly generated BTC, compared to what they’ve spent.
At 17:47 UTC, BTC was trading at USD 47,460. It was down 2% in a day, over 19% in two weeks, and 29% in a month.
____
Learn more:
– Ripple’s Camp Attacks Bitcoin Mining With ‘The Stupidest Idea’ Again
– Bitcoin Hashrate Close to Full Recovery After China’s Mining Ban
– Top 7 Bitcoin & Crypto Mining Stocks You Could Add to Your Stock Portfolio
– Watch: 6 Crypto CEOs Testify About Threshold Issues, Bitcoin Mining, and More
– Major Swedish Power Company Defends Bitcoin Mining as Regulators Propose Ban
– How Bitcoin Mining Might Help Nations With Domestic Energy Production
– Bitcoin Miners Adapt Fast As EU Mulls ‘Climate-Friendly Cryptoassets’
– Dominated by Institutions, Bitcoin Mining is also Possible from Home
- How Tether Co-Founder William Quigley Views Crypto Regulations in Trump’s Second Term
- Trump Appoints PayPal Veteran David Sacks as ‘White House AI and Crypto Czar’
- Can XRP Finally Break $10? Ripple’s Legal Battle Nears an End
- Pi Day is Here – Will Pi Network Price Explode or Keep Crashing?
- Two Big Developments in XRP ETFs Just Happened
More Articles
in numbers
