As Bitcoin’s Hashrate Remains Elevated, BTC’s Mining Difficulty Expected to Reach a Lifetime High

During the last month, Bitcoin’s hashrate has been coasting along above the 200 exahash per second (EH/s) zone, minus a number of drops here and there above and below that range. Following two difficulty changes that saw the difficulty decrease by 1.84%, the network’s difficulty is expected to increase 4.24% within the next 13 hours.

Bitcoin’s Difficulty Expected to Reach All-Time High

Bitcoin miners caught two breaks during the last month when the difficulty dropped two times in a row. The first 1.49% drop occurred at block height 725,760 on March 3, 2022, and the second decrease was a 0.35% drop, which occurred at block height 727,776 on March 17, 2022.

The two consecutive drops made it 1.84% easier for all the mining participants to find BTC blocks. While the difficulty was 27.97 trillion prior to the two reductions, the current difficulty is 27.45 trillion on Wednesday morning at 8:00 a.m. (ET). Within the next 13 hours, the difficulty is expected to increase this time around, jumping 4.24% higher if current estimations are correct.

With an expected 4.24% difficulty increase taking place, Bitcoin’s network difficulty will break records by reaching an all-time high (ATH). If the difficulty increases 4.24%, then the difficulty will be 28.62 trillion for the next two weeks that follow. Miners will deal with the hardest difficulty parameter they have ever dealt with in their mining careers.

Moreover, the difficulty changes that have taken place since January 1, 2020, after block height 610,848, moved at the fastest pace in the network’s lifetime. For instance, it took 4,015 days to get to a difficulty rating of 13.80 trillion, or over ten years. From that point after block height 610,848, with a difficulty rating of 13.80 trillion, it took only 820 days or just over two years to reach the current 27.45 trillion.

At the time of writing, the network’s hashrate is coasting along at 204.27 EH/s and has remained high during the last two weeks. While the hashrate has been fluctuating it has tapped a low of 153.97 EH/s on March 6, and a high of 246.88 EH/s on March 22. At the same time, the top mining pool on Wednesday is Foundry USA with 17.54% of the global hashrate. Foundry USA has 35.88 EH/s of hashpower and has found 77 blocks during the last three days.

In terms of global hashrate positions, Foundry USA is followed by Antpool, Binance Pool, Poolin, and F2pool, respectively. Over the last 30 days, Foundry USA and Antpool have been the top two mining pools finding the most blocks (1,480 blocks combined) last month. It will be interesting to see how the mining pools deal with the upcoming difficulty ATH. Observers will be watching to see how bitcoin miners and the hashrate react to the epoch difficulty change.

What do you think about the network’s upcoming difficulty change? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.