Bitcoin's difficulty rate underwent a new adjustment over the weekend of almost 5%, making Bitcoin an increasingly profitable cryptocurrency for network miners.
Bitcoin (BTC), cryptocurrency The largest cryptocurrency on the market, suffered a new adjustment in the network's mining difficulty over the weekend at block height 691.488. The cryptocurrency's difficulty rate fell by 4,8%, data from the BTC.com platform shows. With this new adjustment, bitcoin's difficulty returns to levels from almost two years ago, when its price was close to $7.500 per unit.
Source: BTC.com
On July 3, Bitcoin experienced the largest difficulty adjustment in its history, dropping by 28% as shown in the chart. Since its all-time high on May 13, Bitcoin's difficulty rate has seen 3 negative adjustments, making BTC an increasingly profitable cryptocurrency for network miners.
The main reason for these adjustments appears to be the departure of miners from China, who are disconnecting their mining equipment on orders from the country's government. Recently, the provinces of Anhui, Henan and Gansu joined the nation's strict regulations against bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, asking miners installed in their territories to cease operations and disconnect their equipment.
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Bitcoin Difficulty and Hash Rate
La mining difficulty It is a value closely linked to the hash rate, or computational power of the network. Thus, the more mining power there is in Bitcoin, the greater the difficulty of mining the cryptocurrency. Remember that the Bitcoin protocol is designed to extract blocks approximately every 10 minutes; therefore, if there is a greater number of miners with great computing power connected to the network, competing to mine the next blocks, then the network will automatically adjust to ensure that the blocks are not mined before the estimated time.
Bitcoin's difficulty, as designed Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, is completely dynamic; therefore, it is a value or metric that will go up or down according to the needs of the network, to ensure that block generation occurs at the rate established in its protocol. This difficulty rate is automatically adjusted every 2.100 blocks mined, which occurs approximately every 2 weeks.
On the other hand, the adjustment will be positive, i.e. it will increase the difficulty rate, if miners mine blocks easily, in less than 10 minutes; the adjustment will be negative, it will decrease the difficulty rate, if miners take much longer than estimated to mine the blocks on the network. On July 1, Bitcoin block number 689.301 took more than 2 hours to confirm, becoming the slowest Bitcoin block in the last 10 years.
China's exit
Currently, as several of the large bitcoin miners, such as BTC.com, Huobi and OKEx, have disconnected their mining equipment to leave China for other jurisdictions where crypto mining activity is carried out, the hash rate The network is experiencing one of the biggest adjustments in history. Since mid-May, when China began cracking down on miners, BTC’s computing power has fallen by 45%, reaching levels from more than a year ago.
At the time of writing, BTC.com shows that the bitcoin hash rate is 101,3 EH/s. This adjustment in the network hash rate has decreased the mining difficulty and increased the profitability of miners, who are the ones who benefit the most from the current state of the network.
Block 689.382 mined solo
Earlier this month, Solo CK Pool software engineer Con Kolivas revealed A solo miner managed to mine block number 689.382 of the Bitcoin network with just 100TH of power. In addition to the stroke of luck, the miner managed to mine the block faster than the rest, due to network difficulty adjustments, which have made mining Bitcoins much easier today.
However, it is worth remembering that this situation will change when BTC miners displaced from China reconnect their rigs. Last week, data provider GlassNode noted that Bitcoin’s hash rate had been recovering slightly; one of the possible reasons behind this recovery could be that miners with old rigs are taking advantage of difficulty adjustments to plug in their rigs and mine some BTC.
Continue reading: Bitcoin Analysis: Investors withdraw 2.000 BTC per day from exchanges and the hash rate stabilizes this week
