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Bitcoin difficulty fell by 0.49% on February 12, 2023, after a sustained all-time high of 39.35 trillion over the previous two weeks (2,016 blocks). The drop in difficulty offers a brief respite for bitcoin miners, after the network recorded a 14.94% increase in the past month.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s hashrate is running at 289.14 exahashes per second (EH/s) after a 0.49% decrease in difficulty at block height 776,160. The network difficulty has been operating at approximately 39,350,942,467,772 hashes for the last 2,016 blocks, or two weeks. With the recent 0.49% decrease in difficulty, the network difficulty will now be set at 39.16 trillion hashes for the next two weeks.
Since the last difficulty change, block times—the intervals between mined blocks—have gone from 10 minutes, 7 seconds to about 11 minutes, 14 seconds long. Bitcoin’s next difficulty retarget is scheduled for around February 26, 2023. The average hash rate over the last 2016 blocks was about 280.6 exahash per second (EH/s), and the average block time for those blocks was 10 minutes, 2 seconds.
Over the past three days, Foundry USA has been the top mining pool with 33.26% of the global hashrate, or approximately 95.89 exahash per second (EH/s) of hashpower. Foundry is followed by Antpool with 15.97% of the global hashrate and Binance Pool with 15.54% of the computing power. F2 pool (14.22%) and Viabtc (9.41%) are respectively next. There are approximately 12 known mining pools today, and the top five control 88.4% of the global hashrate.
According to macromicro.me statistics, the cost of producing bitcoin (BTC) remains higher than the current spot market value. Macromicro.me calculates its estimates based on data on power consumption and daily bitcoin issuance provided by Cambridge University. Currently, the average cost to mine a single bitcoin is around $24,119, while the spot market value is approximately $21,901 per unit.
What impact will the latest drop in difficulty have on the future of Bitcoin mining and the distribution of hash power among mining pools over the next two weeks? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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