Crypto News – The difficulty of mining Bitcoin increased by 2% on Wednesday, reaching a new peak. This is the first adjustment since the halving event last week.
Bitcoin Mining Difficulty: It Rises for First Time After Halving
According to Bitbo data, the difficulty adjustment occurred at block height 840,672, reaching a record of 88.1 trillion. This is the first time that the difficulty of mining Bitcoin has increased in the first adjustment after a halving.
The difficulty of mining a new block in Bitcoin is measured in relation to its maximum ease of mining. Regardless of the number of miners actively mining, it automatically modifies every 2016 block, or almost two weeks, to guarantee that, on average, a new block is found every 10 minutes.
By contrast, following the halvings in November 2012, July 2016, and May 2020, the initial adjustments to the mining difficulty of Bitcoin were -2%, 0%, and -6%, respectively. This has previously occurred when miners who were less skilled or financially stable shut down their equipment, significantly reducing miner profitability due to the decrease in block subsidy payouts.
How is this Halving Different from the Others?
Even though miners will now only receive 3.125 BTC instead of 6.25 BTC as their block subsidy, they will still receive additional transaction fee rewards for each block they mine. Before, after the halving, Bitcoin’s hash rate—a measure of the overall processing power that miners have contributed to the network—dropped since transaction fee rewards were not high enough to prevent it.
Based on The Block’s data dashboard, the hash rate has stayed close to all-time highs this time. According to Mempool, a Bitcoin explorer, bitcoin embarked on a record 104-block run of transaction fee rewards larger than the subsidy after halving block 840,000 earned $2.4 million in fees, considerably above the approximate $200,000 worth of block subsidy payout.
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