Bitcoin mining is about to get a whole lot tougher. The difficulty of mining Bitcoin – a measure of how hard it is to add new transactions to the blockchain – is set to increase by about 5%. This will be the fifth consecutive increase, pushing the difficulty to a new all-time high.
Why the Difficulty Adjustment?
This difficulty adjustment isn’t arbitrary. It’s a built-in mechanism to control the rate at which new Bitcoins are created. The goal is to maintain a roughly 10-minute average time between new blocks added to the blockchain. If miners get too efficient, and start adding blocks faster than this, the difficulty increases to slow things down. This prevents inflation by limiting the supply of new Bitcoins.
The Numbers
Miners have recently been averaging around 9.52 minutes per block, faster than the target. The upcoming adjustment, expected around 4:25 AM UTC on Friday, will raise the difficulty to approximately 136.29 terahashes. This is a significant increase, and it comes on top of already record-high difficulty levels in recent weeks.
What This Means for Miners
This increased difficulty means miners will need even more computing power to successfully mine Bitcoin. While miners have been increasing their computing power recently, it remains to be seen if they can keep up with this latest spike. Will they continue to invest in more powerful equipment, or will some miners decide to scale back? Only time will tell.
Bitcoin Price Update
Meanwhile, the price of Bitcoin has seen some fluctuation. After briefly exceeding $112,000, it’s currently hovering around $110,700.