Bitcoin Network Mining Difficulty Reaches All-Time High, Making Block Discovery More Difficult CryptoBlog

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Bitcoin mining difficulty recorded a record increase on January 15, 2023, rising 10.26% to 37.73 trillion at a block height of 772,128. Network difficulty is now at an all-time high. This means that it takes an average of 37.73 trillion hashes, or attempts, to find a valid bitcoin block reward and add it to the blockchain.

The first difficulty increase of 2023 exceeds all but one difficulty increase in 2022

As of 8:15 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday, January 15, 2023, approximately 286.36 exahash per second (EH/s) of hashrate is dedicated to the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain. The Bitcoin network experienced a retargeting difficulty at 4:11 p.m. EST at block 772,128, resulting in a 10.26% surge.

The difficulty was around 34.09 trillion last week, and it hit an all-time high (ATH) of 37.73 trillion on Sunday, making it exceptionally difficult to find a BTC block. Prior to the January 15, 2023 difficulty increase, the highest difficulty rating on the Bitcoin blockchain was 36.76 trillion on November 6, 2022.

The current difficulty is 2.63% higher than the previous high. The January 15 difficulty increase also tops all but one of last year’s difficulty increases. In 2022, the biggest increase in difficulty occurred on October 10, 2022, at a block height of 758,016, when it increased by 13.55%. The price of Bitcoin has increased by 22.7% in the past seven days, which is beneficial for Bitcoin miners. However, the 10.26% difficulty increase will make the payoffs much tighter.

The new year started off with a bang for Bitcoin as the network hashrate reached an all-time high of 361.20 exahash per second (EH/s) on January 6, 2023, at a block height of 770,709. This surpassed the previous record of 347.16 EH/s set on November 12, 2022. The high hash rate led to faster blocking intervals and the increase in difficulty recorded on Sunday afternoon.

With two records set in the first month of the new year, 2023 will be remarkable for miners. At press time, Bitcoin’s production cost, according to data from macromicro.me, is estimated at $17,377 per unit, while BTC is trading at $20,876 per coin.

Additionally, the concentration of mining pools has increased significantly, with two mining pools controlling over 56.68% of the global hashrate over the past three days. Statistics show that the leading mining pool, Foundry USA, commands 97.03 exahash per second (EH/s) of hashrate, while Antpool has around 55.92 EH/s.

The next difficulty change is expected to occur on or around January 28, 2023, and the current time interval between blocks is approximately 8 minutes and 26 seconds. Despite hitting an all-time high on January 6, the average hash rate over the past 2,016 blocks has been around 268.9 exahashes per second (EH/s). At the time of writing, there are 67,846 blocks left to be mined before the next reward halving and an issuance of 1,736,531.23 Bitcoin (BTC) to be discovered.

Tags in this story All Time Top, Antpool, Bitcoin Mining, Block, Block Height, Block Interval, Block Reward, Block Interval Time, Blockchain, BTC Mining, BTC Price, Concentration, Difficulty , Foundry USA, hash attempts, Hashrate , hashrate-records, increase, mining, Mining difficulty, mining pool, Mining pools, Mining profits, mining cost, network, pool, Profitability, record, retarget

What do you think about the impact of the all-time high difficulty level in bitcoin mining? Share your views in the comments section below.

Jamie Redman

Jamie Redman is the news manager for Bitcoin.com News and a fintech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He is passionate about Bitcoin, open-source code, and decentralized applications. Since September 2015, Redman has written over 6,000 articles for Bitcoin.com News about disruptive protocols emerging today.

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