Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Declines For The First Time In 2022

For the 1st time since the month of November last year, the Bitcoin mining difficulty adjustment has plummeted, declining around 1.5 percent. The move came along with a succession of 6 consecutive positive difficulty adjustments, in which the mining difficulty and hash rate hit all-time highs.

The average hash rate over the last 2 weeks declined to 197.19 exa hashes per second, making the average block time cross the ten-minute target at ten minutes nine seconds. As a consequence of the difficulty adjustment, miners competing to solve the next valid block found it marginally easier.

Bitcoin mining difficulty marginally plummeted subsequent to an eight month long ascend. Notably, the difficulty adjustment is one of the BTC protocol’s most noteworthy features. Every 2 weeks or two thousand and sixteen confirmed blocks, the difficulty for mining a new block “adjusts” based on the average of the last two thousand and sixteen blocks, making it easier or more difficult to mine blocks.

Satoshi Nakamoto mentioned in the Bitcoin white paper,

“the proof-of-work difficulty is determined by a moving average targeting an average number of blocks per hour. If they’re generated too fast, the difficulty increases.”

Notably, the Bitcoin mining domain is becoming more and more competitive, with technology industry players including Intel interested in obtaining a better hash rate and launching their own miners. As Denver Bitcoin suggested, the three hundred exahash per second hash rate might be an obtainable goal in 2022, specifically as mining shows ballooning resilience and geographic flexibility.