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No More Relief for Bitcoin Miners – Mining Difficulty to Increase Again

Bitcoin

Mining

Journalist

Sead Fadilpašić

Journalist

Sead Fadilpašić

About Author

Sead specializes in writing factual and informative articles to help the public navigate the ever-changing world of crypto. He has extensive experience in the blockchain industry, where he has served...

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Last updated:

June 26, 2023

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The previously expected even bigger relief for the Bitcoin (BTC) miners is not coming. Instead, starting tomorrow, Bitcoin mining difficulty, used as a measure for how hard it is to compete for mining rewards, is set to increase as more miners turned their machines on in the past two weeks.

Following the second-largest drop in Bitcoin mining difficulty of 15.95% on March 26, there were initial estimates that the next adjustment may bring an even larger drop. Yet, a day before the scheduled event, major Bitcoin mining pool BTC.com predicts (09:33 UTC) a rise of 1.80%. This would bring the difficulty up from 13.91 T to 14.16 T, or somewhat lower than it was in the second half of January this year. Though it may not sound like a large increase after the historic drop, it does provide another sign of a current shift from the overall redness in the market, including the drops in price, mining difficulty, and hashrate.

Meanwhile, hashrate, or the computational power of the Bitcoin network, increased by 11% in the past two weeks, reaching 105 EH/s, or the level last seen in mid-January. At the time, the hashrate had been rising all the way until the market took a plunge in March.

These increases, in combination with the pressure from the upcoming BTC halving, seems to have claimed a victim. The mining pool hashrate of one of China’s top mining pools, Baite, decreased from 4,000 to 200 petahashes per second from early March until today, leading the pool to a decision to shut off its machines, reports local media. At least for BTC, as they might be switching to mining altcoins. On the other hand, as reported, major crypto exchange Binance is launching its own mining pool.

Miners Revenue (USD)

Total value of coinbase block rewards and transaction fees paid to miners.

Meanwhile, well-known Bitcoin analyst Willy Woo has found that there may not be more sell pressure coming, adding that only strong miners remain in these situations.

And speaking of the prices, Bitcoin is back above USD 7,000, the level it was previously priced at in the first part of January. It’s currently (9:36 UTC) USD 7,370, having gone up 4% in the past day and 13% in the past week.