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The mining challenge in Bitcoin – a measure of the difficulty of competing for mining rewards on the world's largest blockchain network – recorded its largest increase in two weeks in 12 months.
According to data from BTC.com, the mining difficulty reached $ 9.06 billion (T) at a block height of 584,640 around 9:17 UTC on July 9, surpbading 14.23% the previous record of 7.93 T This is the strongest growth in two weeks since August 2018 – a sign that competition among miners is not only intensifying but that it's going strong. Accelerates at an accelerated pace.
The bitcoin network is designed to adjust its difficulty of extraction every 2016 blocks (about 14 days) depending on the participating extraction power at each cycle, to ensure that the block production time to the next period remains approximately every 10 minutes.
When there are fewer machines competing to solve the bitcoin hash function to win newly created bitcoins, the difficulty decreases. when more players jump in, it goes up.
Competition is currently so fierce that the difficulty of mining has exceeded the $ 8 trillion range to break through the $ 9 trillion threshold. The difficulty estimated by BTC.com during the next period of adjustment could reach 10.35 T, which would represent an increase of 14.17%.
Similarly, computing power dedicated to securing the bitcoin network also recorded the strongest growth in any two-week difficulty adjustment cycle since August 2018, based on data from BTC.com and CoinDesk calculations. .
The excitement of bitcoin extraction on July 5 pushed the hash rate to 74.5 quintillion per second (EH / s), in line with the predictions of Chinese mining companies that were turning machines to take advantage cheap hydroelectric power. during the rainy summer season.
Total hash power is expected to continue to rise as the peak of the rainy season is still in southwest China, a region that accounts for half of global bitcoin production.
Boom and bust
The difficulties encountered in mining by Bitcoin were particularly affected last year by the slowdown in the market. It dropped 30% from October to December and only returned to the previous peak of last month.
That said, the increase in the hash rate and operating difficulties of Bitcoin has not yet caught up with the pace of soaring Bitcoin prices, at least not as much as during the rise in the second half of 2017.
According to data from CoinDesk, Bitcoin Price Index, the price of bitcoin has increased by 400%, from around $ 4,000 to nearly $ 20,000 between June and December 2017. During the same period, the computing power network has increased by at least 200%.
However, while the price of bitcoin soared to $ 12,000 in June (a 300% jump since the drop to $ 3,000 earlier this year), the hash rate of the network has only increased by 100% during the same period.
The reason for this delay is the insufficient supply of new bitcoin mining equipment to meet market demand, as the major mining producers face bottlenecks in production capacity as a result of supply. limited chips from semiconductor vendors.
Image of the mining farm via Shutterstock
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