Following the drop in value during Thursday evening’s trading sessions, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty rose to a lifetime high, reaching 26.64 trillion after jumping 9.32% at block height 719,712. The mining difficulty’s all-time high (ATH) is now higher than the ATH it reached on May 15, 2021, which means it is currently more difficult than ever before to find a bitcoin block reward.
Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Hits ATH at 26.64 Trillion, Hashrate Flutters After Price Drops and Difficulty Rises
On January 20, 2022, Bitcoin experienced its 357th epoch difficulty adjustment, rising 9.32% from the previous two weeks. At the time of writing, the mining difficulty of the Bitcoin (BTC) network has reached an ATH reaching 26.64 trillion. The last ATH difficulty was recorded 251 days ago on May 15, 2021, when it peaked just above 25 trillion.
At that time, at block height 683,424, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty jumped 21.53% making it harder than ever to find a BTC block reward. However, a large shift downward occurred when China banned crypto mining in the summer months of 2021. BTC’s mining difficulty saw the largest epoch drop ever on July 3, 2021, slipping 27.94% lower at block height 689,472.
The change in difficulty that occurred on Thursday evening January 21, 2022 makes it the highest setting ever reached in 13 years. At the time of writing and for the next two weeks, the mining difficulty of BTC is around 26,643,185,256,535. Since the increase in difficulty and the sudden drop in BTC prices last night, the global hashrate has much decreased.
Currently, the global hashrate is just above 160 exahash per second (EH/s) and just before the difficulty increase the hashrate was coasting along at 218 EH/s, which is 26% higher than today’s hashrate. The largest mining pool is Foundry USA over the last three days, with 18.1% of the global hashpower. Foundry commands 35.42 EH/s and is followed by F2pool (29.65 EH/s) and Poolin (26.77 EH/s).
