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After a slight decrease of 0.49% on February 12, 2023, Bitcoin’s network difficulty is expected to experience a significant increase over three days on February 24. Estimates indicate that the difficulty could see the largest increase of the year, surpassing the 10.26% increase that occurred on January 15 at block height 772,128.
In 2022, Bitcoin’s hashrate remained above the 200-exahash-per-second (EH/s) range. In 2023, however, 300 EH/s appears to be the new norm. According to statistics, Bitcoin’s hash rate during the last 2016 blocks has averaged around 310.5 EH/s. In addition, bitcoin block times have ranged from 8 minutes and 55 seconds to 8 minutes and 68 seconds, which is faster than the average of 10 minutes. The high hash rate and faster block times indicate a significant increase in difficulty, which is expected to happen on February 24th.
Statistics indicate that the upcoming difficulty adjustment, scheduled for Friday, will be the biggest of the year, surpassing the previous record set on January 15th. The estimated increase for the February 24 adjustment is expected to be between 10.78% and 11.5%. The current difficulty is about 39.16 trillion hashes, and the next difficulty adjustment will likely push it past 40 trillion. A 10.78% increase would result in a difficulty of approximately 43.35 trillion hashes. Regardless of the final outcome, an increase in difficulty will make it more challenging for bitcoin miners to discover new blocks.
At the time of writing, the Foundry USA mining pool has 33.33% of the network’s hashrate, or 105.37 EH/s. Antpool accounts for around 18.66% of the global hashrate, dedicating 58.98 EH/s to the Bitcoin blockchain. Together, these two pools captured more than 51% of the pie consisting of 13 known pools and 11.93 EH/s of unknown hash power. Following Foundry and Antpool are F2Pool, Binance Pool and Viabtc, which together control 33.54% of the global hashrate. These top five pools contribute a combined 84.54% of the total hash rate that provides security to the Bitcoin blockchain.
What do you think about the expected significant increase in Bitcoin’s network difficulty? Let us know what you think about this topic in the comments section below.
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