While Bitcoin is coasting under $20K territory, the network hash rate is still high, following the all-time high (ATH) recorded on October 5 when the hash rate was 250.04 exahashes /per second (EH/s) and remains high. At the time of this writing, the current block processing speed is faster than the typical 10-minute average block interval from the current block height (757,531) to the last difficulty adjustment. Statistics indicate that with much faster block times, the network could see the largest difficulty increase this year, with estimates suggesting it could jump 9% to 13.2% higher.
Block times and hash rates suggest a marked increase in the difficulty of bitcoin mining
Bitcoin mining appears to become more difficult overall on the next retarget date, which occurs on October 10, 2022 Two days ago, on October 5, the network’s total hash rate reached ATH at 321 EH/s with a block height of 757,214. with BTC prices dropping and difficulty With the level close to the last ATH, miners are relentlessly dedicating their computational power to theBTCchain, lavishing computational power on the BTCchain. At the moment, the hash rate is coasting atAfter reaching ATH on Wednesday, it is coasting at 250 EH/s
Data from bitinfocharts.com shows that block time (the mining interval between each block) is currently faster than the 10-minute average. Currently at 9:00 AM ET, metrics show that block time is about 9:05 AM ET, but other dashboards show much faster at . Given that the average bitcoin block interval between the current high (757,471) and the last difficulty epoch (756,000) is 8 minutes 49 seconds,. BTCmeans that the network difficulty is scheduled to increase markedly; the October 10 difficulty jump could be the highest network difficulty increase of the year.
According to btc.com data, an increase of about 9.34% would exceed the second highest network increase in 2022. if btc.com’s estimate is correct,the network difficulty for BTCwould be 31. 36 trillion to 34.29 trillion. Metrics from Clark Moody’s Bitcoin dashboardindicate that the change in difficulty could be much higher, and at the time of writing Moody’s dashboard indicates that it could be about 13.2% higher than it is now. The bitcoin network has roughly 400+ blocks until the next retarget.
It is quite possible that hash rates will slow down and block times will return to the 10-minute range. In that case, the increase in difficulty could be considerably less than Btc.com’s estimate of a 9% increase; every two weeks, or after 2,016 blocks are discovered, the network difficulty adjusts, makingBTCblocks harder or easier to find BTCblocks become harder or easier to find, depending on how fast the 2,016 blocks are discovered.
If 2,016 blocks are discovered too quickly, the network’s algorithm will adjust the difficulty rating higher; if the blocks are discovered at a much slower pace, the difficulty rating may decrease. The last time the difficulty rating dropped significantly was on July 3, 2021, when the block was 689,472 high and the difficulty rating dropped 27.94%. That means it was 27% easier to find aBTCblock subsidy compared to before block 689,472
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