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Despite a 9.95% increase last week and all-time high difficulty, bitcoin’s hashrate has averaged around 305 exahash per second (EH/s) over the past 30 days. According to current data, the hash rate has been around 308 EH/s over the last 2016 blocks. The next difficulty change, due on March 10th, is projected to increase again, as block times have been faster than the 10 minute average, coming in at 8 minutes and 30 seconds to 9 minutes and 41 seconds per block.
Bitcoin’s computational power has remained high despite a 9.95% difficulty increase on February 24, 2023, at block height 778,176. Statistics show that on Sunday, March 5, the difficulty is estimated to increase by more than 3% during the next difficulty retarget on March 10 . While the difficulty is a staggering 43.05 trillion hashes and the cost of mine is higher than the current spot value 300 EH/s or higher has been the norm since the last retarget.
Currently, more than 60,000 blocks are left to be mined until the next halving, and in the last 30 days, 4,557 blocks were mined, and Foundry USA discovered 1,514 of them. Foundry commands 34.44% of the global hashrate, or 113.45 EH/si over the past 24 hours. Of the 151 blocks mined, the Foundry discovered 52, and three-day statistics show the pool has acquired 163 blocks.
Thirty-day, three-day and 24-hour statistics indicate that Antpool is the second largest mining pool during these periods. Of the 4,557 blocks mined since February 5, 2023, Antpool discovered 815 blocks, accounting for 17.88% of the global hash rate in one month. Foundry and Antpool were followed by F2Pool (14.99%), Binance Pool (11.24%) and Viabtc (8.03%).
Bitcoin miners have been dealing with lower BTC spot prices as the price has fallen more than 8% in the past two weeks. Miners earned more fees (the cost of sending transactions) from the Ordinal Inscription trend as fees jumped to 3.5% of a block reward value on February 16. Bitcoin network fees dropped to 1.5% of a block reward four days later.
Data shows that network fees are equivalent to 2.1% of a block reward at the time of writing. Despite the challenges, many bitcoin mining pools have remained strong and contributed to an increase in the global hash rate. However, the higher production costs compared to the current spot market price and the continuous increase in difficulty may deter some mining operations from participating.
Given the expected increase in difficulty and current market uncertainty, what do you think the future holds for bitcoin miners? Share your thoughts on this topic in the comments section below.
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