Despite a 9.95% increase last week and the highest difficulty level ever recorded, bitcoin hash rates have averaged about 305 exahashes per second (EH/s) over the past 30 days. Current data shows that the hash rate for the last 2,016 blocks is about 308 EH/s. The next difficulty change, scheduled for March 10, is expected to increase again, with block times ranging from 8 minutes 30 seconds to 9 minutes 41 seconds per block, faster than the 10-minute average The following is a summary of the results.
Bitcoin network difficulty is expected to increase, while hash values remain above
Bitcoin’s computing power remains high despite a 9.95% increase in difficulty with a block height of 778,176 on February 24, 2023. Statistics estimate that on Sunday, March 5, the difficulty will increase by more than 3%during the next difficulty retarget on March 10. While the difficulty is a staggering43.5 trillion hashes, mining costs are higher than the current spot value and have been in the 300 EH/s range or higher since the last retargeting, which is the norm.
Currently, there are over 60,000 blocks left to mine until the next half-life, but in the past30 days. 4,557 blocks have been mined, of which 1,514 were discovered by Foundry USA Foundry has 34.44% of the world hash rate, pastcommanded 113.45 EH/s in 24 hours. Of the 151 blocks mined, Foundry has found 52 blocks, andthree-day statisticsshow that the pool has acquired 163 blocks.
30-day, 3-day, and 24-hour statistics show that Antpool is the second-largest mining pool over these periods: of the 4,557 blocks mined since February 5, 2023, Antpool found 815 blocks, for a month of the global hashrate of 17.88%, followed by Foundry and Antpool, then F2Pool (14.99%), Binance Pool (11.24%), and Viabtc (8.03%).
Bitcoin miners are dealing with loweras the spot price of BTChas fallen over 8% in the past two weeks. Miners were earning more fees (the cost of sending a transaction) from the Ordinal Inscription trend as fees jumped to 3.5% of the block reward value on February 16. Bitcoinnetwork feesdropped to 1.5% of block rewards after four days.
data show that network fees amount to 2.1% of block rewards at the time of writing. Despite these challenges, many bitcoin mining pools remain strong, contributing to higher global hash rates. However, high production costs relative to current spot market prices and continued increases in difficulty may discourage some miners from participating.
Given the expected increase in difficulty and current market uncertainty, what do you think the future holds for bitcoin miners? Share
