The bitcoin mining difficulty It has decreased by 15.95% since the last readjustment on March 9, the second largest drop in Bitcoin's history. The last readjustment It happened this morning in block # 622,944 which led to a new difficulty of 13.91T below its previous reading of 16.55T.
A drop in difficulty is caused by a reduction in hashing power, which means that fewer miners are being used to mine the bitcoin. The hash rate has dropped from 118.40 EH / s in recent weeks to 99.59 EH / s, reprinting an expected drop of 15.89%.
Mining difficulty is automatically measured by bitcoin software taking into account the amount of hash rate on the network. The higher the hash rate, the greater the mining difficulty in maintaining a relatively uniform block creation time. Bitcoin has a block creation time of 10 minutes and to maintain this time, the mining difficulty will be reset according to the hash rate rise or fall.
The hash rate also translates to the number of miners competing for block rewards. If more miners join the race for block rewards, the hash rate will increase, making it easier to mine bitcoins. The effect is that the block time will be reduced, which will require a mining difficulty reset to maintain the block creation time. This exercise occurs every 2,016 blocks or approximately every two weeks.
It is interesting to note that the price of bitcoin has also fallen in the past three weeks following a market panic caused by the global Coronavirus epidemic. Depressed prices are expected to lead to lower profits for miners, some of whom may have been squeezed.
To make matters worse, the mining difficulty had positively readjusted on March 9, making it more difficult. As more miners left the network, block creation times increased to 11 minutes and 54 seconds.
The bitcoin price has corrected more than 55% in the last three weeks as of March 7 with initial figures of approximately $ 9,100. On March 13, just a week later, the flagship cryptocurrency reached an annual low of $ 3,850 according to data from Bitstamp based in Luxembourg. The coin rebounded to $ 7,100 on the 20th, a level that was maintained for the most part last week.
With the mining difficulty falling and the price of Bitcoin rising, we may be able to see an increase in the hash rate in the coming days and weeks, and most miners who were disconnected are back online.
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