After the last two difficulty increases of the Bitcoin network, another increase in mining difficulty is expected to take place on March 24, 2023. Statistics show that Bitcoin’s hash rate has remained high despite the last two difficulty adjustments, and block generation times have been faster than the ten-minute average.
Bitcoin difficulty is expected to increase
At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s difficulty level is 43.55 trillion. And the hash rate of the network is still above the 300 exahash/second range. The exact value is around 319.86 EH/s. Bitcoin has gained 26.2% against the US dollar in the last two weeks. This has greatly helped the profitability of miners, and the spot value of BTC is already a mining costs is above
Bitcoin miners have also faced two consecutive difficulty increases in the past month. On the first occasion, it jumped up by 9.95% on February 24, 2023, and on the second occasion, on March 10, it increased by 1.16%. However, the rise does not seem to have negatively affected bitcoin miners. Because the block intervals (the time between each mined block) are still less than the ten-minute average. Currently, block interval times range from 9 minutes to 28 seconds and 9 minutes to 31 seconds.
According to current data, the estimated difficulty change for Friday, March 24th is expected to be between 2.51% and 5.7% from the current 43.55 trillion. If miners maintain or even accelerate the pace after this, the difficulty could potentially rise above 50 trillion hashes after the next adjustment. Current estimates put the target range at between 44.64 trillion and 49.25 trillion.
According to mining distribution statistics, Foundry USA currently has the largest bitcoin mining pool with 97.22 EH/s, or 30.31% of the global hash rate. Foundry is followed by Antpool with 61.03 EH/s and F2pool with 46.13 EH/s. The five largest bitcoin mining pools, including Foundry, Antpool, F2pool, Binance Pool and Viabtc, controlled 84.52% of the global hash rate as measured on March 21, 2023.
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