According to information published by BTC.com, the level of bitcoin mining difficulty, which gauges how challenging it is to mine a block and receive rewards, has reached a record high.
At block height 794,304, the mining difficulty has increased by 2.18% to a new high of 52.35 trillion.
Another critical measure is the network’s average hashrate, which right now is 383.87 exahashes per second and is almost at the all-time high.
For those who are not familiar, mining difficulty is a measure of how many resources are needed to create a new Bitcoin. The difficulty changes to make sure that the time it takes to create a new block stays around 10 minutes as more miners join the network and the pace of block generation rises. Every 2016 block, or generally every two weeks, this modification takes place.
A greater level of difficulty means that there is more competition among miners to crack the code that permits the addition of a new block to the blockchain.
The difficulty of mining Bitcoin has been growing throughout the course of the year, according to data from the beginning of the year. The difficulty level has usually been increasing, with a few sporadic dips, since it peaked at 34.09 trillion at block height 770,112 in early January. The biggest rise was on January 15 when it rose 10.26% to 37.59 trillion at block height 772,128. The difficulty level has remained on the rise, reaching the most current record high despite slight dips in early February and May.
It’s possible that the recent rise in mining difficulty indicates that the Bitcoin network is strong and busy, with more miners competing to add new blocks. But as mining new Bitcoin becomes more difficult due to the increased competition, more resources and computer power are needed.
