Bitcoin Miners Breathe a Sigh of Relief as Difficulty Drops 1.45% After Five Consecutive Increases Bitcoin Insider

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Bitcoin’s network has been putting miners to the test lately, with five consecutive difficulty increases making them nervous. However, on May 4, 2023, at block height 788,256, the network’s difficulty level plummeted, dropping 1.45% and bringing the overall difficulty down to 48.01 trillion for the next two weeks.

Bitcoin Difficulty Takes a Plunge After Five Consecutive Increases

Bitcoin’s difficulty level finally dropped on May 4, 2023, having increased five times since the February 24 9.95% increase. The five difficulty increases combined equaled a 22.62% increase, and the final drop brings it down to 1.45% less. The change occurred at Bitcoin block height 788,256. At the time of writing, the network hashrate is 355.90 exahash per second (EH/s).

Just two days ago, the Bitcoin network hit a major milestone as its hashrate hit an all-time high of 491 EH/s at a block height of 787,895. But with the next difficulty adjustment just around the corner from the street on May 18, 2023 and less than 2,000 blocks away, miners are preparing for what is to come. While the recent drop in difficulty has given them some much-needed relief, current block times are still above the ten-minute average. In fact, the last block interval lasted ten minutes and 49 seconds.

Additionally, the Bitcoin network is currently struggling with a mempool with over 200,000 unconfirmed transactions awaiting processing by miners. To speed up the process, users pay a high priority fee of $5.05 per transaction, while a medium priority transfer will cost them $4.61. As for the major mining pools on May 4, Foundry USA takes the cake with 96.62 EH/s of hashing power, which represents 27.17% of Bitcoin’s total hashrate. Behind are Antpool (80.38 EH/s), F2pool (48.72 EH/s), Binance Pool (38.16 EH/s) and Viabtc (27.61 EH/s).

Tags in this story 1.45% Down, Antpool, Binance Pool, Bitcoin, Block Height, Cryptocurrency, difficulty, difficulty metric, F2Pool, Foundry USA, Hashpower, Hashrate, Priority Fee, Mempool, mining, Mining Difficulty, Network, Unconfirmed Transactions, ViaBTC

What do you think the future holds for Bitcoin’s difficulty level? Will it continue to increase steadily or can we expect further declines in the coming months? Share your thoughts 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 7,000 articles for Bitcoin.com News about disruptive protocols emerging today.

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