The difficulty in mining blocks on the Bitcoin network rose by about 10%. The processing power of miners exceeded 125 TH/s.
Bitcoin’s mining difficulty reached its all-time high with the new adjustment last July 13th. This occurred shortly after the hash rate also reached a new high. Currently, the difficulty in processing on the network is 17.35T, with an increase of nearly 10% compared to the last period, which was 15.78T.
The total of 17.35T represents the all-time high, exceeding the 16.55T that Bitcoin recorded between March 9th and 25th of this year, according to data from statoshi.info. The same source records that between the end of April and mid-May (the last two periods that started before the halving); there were also levels of difficulty above 16T.
The difficulty in mining Bitcoin is the value that determines the complexity of the mathematical puzzle that it is necessary to solve to mine a block on the chain. This value varies according to the processing power that miners have accumulated; it adjusts automatically every 2,016 blocks.
A rebound in Bitcoin’s hash rate preceded this adjustment in difficulty. The 7-day average of the network’s cumulative processing power peaked above 125 EH/s last July 7th. That figure also represents an all-time high for the network, according to data from blockchain.com.
After the third Bitcoin halving, the hash rate dropped to 90 EH/s. The processing power has been recovering until returning to the levels before that event and has recently exceeded them.
The period of early June had the lowest difficulty to mine a block so far this year. Right after the halving, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty reached 13.73T. At the beginning of the year, the lowest level was 13.79T.
Biggest Adjustment in Bitcoin’s Mining Difficulty since 2018
After the post-halving drop, the difficulty adjusted upwards again in mid-June, since the adjustment on June 16th was 14.95%, compared to the previous period. In percentage terms, that change was the largest that Bitcoin had recorded since January 2018.
After the reduction of mining rewards by half, Bitcoin’s hash rate dropped by more than 16%. However, said drop was less than that what some predictions had estimated. Analysts of the industry came to consider a possible drop of up to 30% in Bitcoin’s computational power in mid-April.
There was already a reversal of the drop that occurred. Both the hash rate and the difficulty are at all-time highs, signaling that the network’s activity maintains the same strength that it had before the halving. The greater the processing power, the greater security on the network. A hypothetical attack is more difficult and expensive as the accumulated power becomes higher.
At the same time, the behavior of Bitcoin in the cryptocurrency market remains stable. It is important to remember that Bitcoin has been able to recover from all-time lows on several occasions. This is positive for those who want to invest in the main cryptocurrency.
By Alexander Salazar
