Despite Bitcoin miners earning the lowest profit per petahash per second (PH/s) and countless headlines showing particular mining operations folded from crypto winter, the network’s total hash rate continues to grow at a rate of nearly 300 exahash Velocity increases per second (EH/s). With bitcoin prices lower and mining difficulty hitting record highs, current trends are not holding bitcoin miners back. Meanwhile, the next difficulty adjustment, planned for on or around October 23, shows that the difficulty will be increased again.
Bitcoin’s hash rate remains high despite current hurdles
With less than two days left, it looks like the network difficulty for Bitcoin (BTC) miners will rise again. Bitcoin’s difficulty (new high) is currently at an all-time high of 35.61 trillion, with the next change scheduled to happen on or around October 23, 2022 in less than two days.
Bitcoin’s difficulty on October 21, 2022 is about 35.61 trillion. The retargeting is scheduled for October 23, 2022, and current metrics estimate that the difficulty could rise by 4%.
While the new high difficulty makes it more challenging for Bitcoin miners to find block subsidies, miners still have a large amount of hashrate used to secure the leading cryptocurrency asset’s network. Today, statistics from coinwarz.com show that BTC has totaled between 290 and 315 EH/s in the past hour.
On October 21, 2022, Bitcoin’s hash rate was sliding at 300 exahash per second (EH/s). The network recently hit an all-time high on October 11, 2022, reaching 325 exahash at block height 758,138.
The metric was slightly lower than October 11, when a new high for total hash rate was recorded at block height 758,138. At that time, the computing power of the entire network reached a record high of 325.11 EH/s.
Friday’s current block time is also less than the 10-minute average, as some data points show today’s current block time between 8:30 and 9:35 minutes. Typically, when 2,016 blocks were discovered faster than the ten-minute average, the relocation date was less than two weeks old.
BTC/USD 1-hour chart for Friday, October 21, 2022. BTC price is currently hovering above the $19,000 area in a range, and recently, the price fell below the $19,000 area, falling to a low of $18,157 per unit at the end of September.
When this trend occurs, the mining difficulty of the blockchain network will increase to make it harder for miners to find BTC blocks. Satoshi Nakamoto created the system in such a way that block times will remain within a consistent ten-minute average.
At the time of writing, the difficulty estimate is 4.03% to 4.6% higher than the current 35.61 trillion. The projected percentage increase will push BTC’s mining difficulty into the 37 trillion range.
Currently, Foundry USA, the largest mining pool today, has an average of 63.34 EH/s dedicated to the BTC chain over the past three days. Foundry’s computing power accounts for about 23.86% of the entire network’s computing power.
Current three-day statistics on the distribution of Bitcoin (BTC) hash rate mining pools.
The top five BTC mining pools, Foundry, include miners like Antpool (48.37 EH/s), F2pool (39.73 EH/s), Binance Pool (35.13 EH/s), and Viabtc (23.03 EH/s). . There are currently 13 known mining pools dedicated to providing computing power to the BTC chain, and 12.09 EH/s or 4.56% of the total network is controlled by unknown miners.
The record high hash rate comes at a time when some large mining companies have been struggling with financial difficulties and bankruptcy. This week, Chris Brendler, a market analyst at investment bank DA Davison, downgraded shares of Argo Blockchain (NASDAQ: ARBK) and Core Scientific (NASDAQ: CORZ) to Neutral.
With the hash rate so high, someone just looking at Bitcoin’s computing power would be unable to tell that some BTC miners are struggling. It could be that while a handful of BTC mining operations have faltered, the larger operations are simply packing up their idles, their ASICs, and facilities at a discount.
How do you think Bitcoin’s hash rate remains high despite obstacles such as difficult new highs and lower Bitcoin prices? Let us know what you think about this topic in the comments section below.
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Source of information: Compiled from BITCOIN by 0x information.The copyright belongs to the original author and may not be reproduced without permission