Bitcoin Difficulty Drops, Benefitting Miners
Mining bitcoin (BTC) has become easier for miners as the network’s mining difficulty decreased by 3.9% at block height 826,560 on January 20, 2024. This adjustment brings the mining difficulty down to 70.34 trillion from the previous level of 73.19 trillion, making it less challenging to discover a block reward. The current difficulty of 70.34 trillion sets the maximum threshold for a block’s hash to be valid. It will remain unchanged for the next 2,016 blocks, roughly two weeks, before the next adjustment is expected on February 4, 2024.
Mining Entities and Hashrate Distribution
As of January 20, there are approximately 51 mining entities or pools contributing hashrate to the Bitcoin blockchain. Foundry USA holds the highest share with 29.43% of the total hashrate, followed by Antpool with 22.49%. Other significant players include F2pool, Viabtc, and Binance Pool.
Declining Hashrate
The total hashrate of the Bitcoin network currently stands at 497 EH/s, slightly below the seven-day moving average of 547 EH/s observed on January 15, 2024. This decrease is primarily due to reduced mining operations in Texas caused by extreme subzero temperatures impacting the state.
Hot Take: Bitcoin Mining Becomes Easier with Recent Difficulty Drop
The recent decrease in Bitcoin mining difficulty by 3.9% has made the process of mining BTC slightly more feasible for miners. With the mining difficulty now at 70.34 trillion, it has become less challenging to discover block rewards. This adjustment is expected to benefit the mining community until the next difficulty modification on February 4, 2024. The distribution of hashrate among mining entities shows dominance by Foundry USA and Antpool, while the overall hashrate has seen a decline due to scaled-back mining operations in Texas.
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