Following four consecutive Bitcoin mining difficulty increases, the network’s difficulty dropped for the first time in 68 days, sliding 2.14% at block height 756,000 on Tuesday. The change means it’s currently 2.14% easier to find a bitcoin block reward following the mining difficulty’s all-time high (ATH) that took place on September 13.
bitcoin difficulty slide 2.14%
Bitcoin miners caught a break this week after the network’s mining difficulty dropped by 2.14% on Tuesday evening. Difficulty now stands at 31.36 trillion after 32.04 trillion ATH recorded on Tuesday, 13 September. The network’s difficulty will remain at 31.36 trillion for the next two weeks, as the difficulty is adjusted every 2,016 blocks.
While the network’s hashrate is coasting along at 234 exahash per second (EH/s), statistics show during the last 2,016 blocks the average hashrate was 225.2 EH/s. According to current metrics, with current BTC prices and electrical costs at $0.07 per kilowatt hour (kWh), roughly 41 SHA256 application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) bitcoin miners make an estimated profit between $0.12 and $7.95 per day. At $0.12 per kWh, nine ASIC bitcoin miners make an estimated profit between $0.33 and $4.24 per day.
The top five most profitable ASIC miners today include Bitmain Antminer S19 XP 140 Terahash per second (TH/s), Antminer S19 Pro+ Hyd (198 TH/s), Microbt Whatsminer M50S (126 TH/s). Microbt Whatsminer M50 (114 TH/s), and Bitmain Antminer S19 Pro (110 TH/s).
During the past three days, 423 blocks were discovered by miners and Foundry USA found 108 blocks. Foundry has been the top miner during the last three days with 25.53% of the global hashrate or 56.53 EH/s.
Foundry is followed by Antpool, F2pool, Binance Pool and Viabtc respectively. Currently, 11 known mining pools are dedicating hash rate to the bitcoin blockchain, which is 98.11% of the global hash rate. The anonymous hash rate is 1.89% of the global hash rate today, or 4.19 EH/s used to discover eight of the 423 blocks found in three days.
Meanwhile, at current block time speeds the next difficulty change is estimated to be an increase of roughly 1.32%, but that could change a great deal over the next 1,957 blocks left to mine.
