Bitcoin Difficulty Hits New All-Time High After Fourth Consecutive Increase – Mining Bitcoin News

On April 6, 2023, Bitcoin’s difficulty rose 2.23% higher at block height 784,224, reaching another all-time high. It is the fourth consecutive difficulty increase on the Bitcoin network since February 24, and the protocol’s current difficulty is 47.89 trillion, which is only 2.11 trillion away from reaching 50 trillion.

Bitcoin difficulty jumps 2.23% higher

Bitcoin’s current difficulty of approximately 47.89 trillion is an all-time high, meaning that it has never been harder for bitcoin miners to find blocks. The current difficulty level of the Bitcoin protocol requires miners to perform approximately 47.89 trillion calculations via a trial-and-error approach to discover a cryptographic hash value that meets the predetermined criteria for each attached block in the blockchain.

The April 6 difficulty increase was the fourth increase in the last 41 days or since block height 778,176. Thursday’s increase was 2.23% higher than the previous two weeks, and the difficulty will remain at 47.89 trillion until or around April 20th. Despite the difficulty, the hash rate is still high at 340.61 exahash per second (EH/s), and last month the hash rate hit 400 EH/s on March 23rd.

Statistics from coinwarz.com indicate that the network reached an all-time high of 414.33 EH/s on March 25, 2023, at block height 782,408. At the current hash rate of 340 EH/s, block intervals are still below the ten-minute mark, up from eight minutes and 29 seconds to nine minutes and eight seconds Thursday night at 9:30 PM Eastern Time.

In the last three days, 463 blocks were discovered and Foundry USA found 159 blocks using 117.66 EH/s, or about 34.34% of the global network. Antpool captured 95 blocks in the same period, at 70.30 EH/s, or 20.52% of the network’s hashpower. The average hash rate over the previous difficulty adjustment period was approximately 342.50 EH/s.

What do you think of Bitcoin’s fourth consecutive difficulty increase? Share your thoughts on this topic in the comments section below.

Jamie Redman

Jamie Redman is the news editor at Bitcoin.com News and a financial technology journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open source and decentralized applications. Since September 2015, Redman has written more than 6,000 articles for Bitcoin.com News about the disruptive protocols emerging today.