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Bitcoin Miners Heave a Breath as Difficulty Drops 1.45% After Five Consecutive Increases – Mining Bitcoin News
Bitcoin’s network has been putting miners through the wringer lately, with five straight difficulty levels that had them on edge. However, on May 4, 2023, at block height 788,256, the network difficulty level took a tumble, falling by 1.45% and bringing the total difficulty down to 48.01 trillion for the next two weeks.
Bitcoin difficulty takes a dip after five straight increases
Bitcoin’s difficulty level finally fell on May 4, 2023, having increased fivefold since its February 24th increase of 9.95%. The five difficulty increases combined equated to a 22.62% increase, and the latest drop brings it down 1.45% lower. The change occurred at Bitcoin block height 788,256. At the time of writing, the network’s hash rate is 355.90 exahash per second (EH/s).
Just two days ago, the Bitcoin network hit a major milestone when its hash rate rose to an all-time high of 491 EH/s at block height 787,895. But with the next difficulty adjustment just around the corner on May 18, 2023, and less than 2,000 blocks away, miners are preparing look forward to what’s to come. While the recent difficulty drop has given them some much-needed relief, current block times are still hovering above the ten-minute average. In fact, the last block interval was ten minutes and 49 seconds long.
In addition, the Bitcoin network is currently struggling with a mempool of over 200,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to be processed by miners. To speed up the process, users pay a high-priority fee of $5.05 per transaction, while a medium-priority transfer will set them back $4.61. When it comes to the top May 4th mining pools, Foundry USA takes the cake with 96.62 EH/s hashpower, accounting for 27.17% of Bitcoin’s total hashrate. Following are Antpool (80.38 EH/s), F2pool (48.72 EH/s), Binance Pool (38.16 EH/s) and Viabtc (27.61 EH/s).
What do you think the future holds for Bitcoin difficulty? Will it continue to rise steadily, or can we expect more falls in the coming months? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
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