Altcoin News: The Difficulty of Mining Bitcoin Experienced the Largest Rise in the Last Year

July 9, 2019, by Marko Vidrih on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE

The complexity of mining Bitcoin has experienced the largest rise in two single weeks in the past year.

According to the portal BTC.com, mining complexity reached 9.06 T at block 584,640 on July 9, thus surpassing the previous value of 7.93 T by 14.23%. This is the largest increase in complexity for any two-week period from August 2018.

The difficulty of mining Bitcoin changes every 2,016 blocks or approximately every 14 days based on the amount of computing power used during the last cycle, which allows you to maintain the rate of release of blocks at 10 minutes.

The increase in difficulty is a reflection of the increasing competition between miners, currently supplying the network with a hash rate of 65 EH / s. According to BTC.com estimates, after the completion of the current cycle, the complexity of mining can increase by another 14.17% and reach 10.35 T.

The current maximum hash rate was recorded on July 5 at 74.5 EH / s. It is assumed that the owners of mining farms in China, who have intensified against the background of the formation of excess electricity in the rainy summer months, could become a catalyst for the growth of computing power.

Source: BTC.com

At the end of 2018, the opposite trend was observed — from October to December, the complexity of mining Bitcoin fell by 30% and returned to previous highs only in the last month.

As noted by CoinDesk, from June to December 2017, the price of Bitcoin increased by 400%. Over the same period, the amount of computing power in the network increased by at least 200%. During the current rise — from $3,000 to $12,000 or 300% — the hash rate increased only 2 times. Among other things, this lag may be due to a shortage of mining equipment on the market.

Author: Marko Vidrih