Bitcoin’s mining difficulty, the amount of effort and time needed to find a proper hash for each blockchain block, continues to increase as of April 7 2023.
The latest #Bitcoin block difficulty adjustment pushes the difficulty metric to 47.89 trillion – another record high.
As a result, it's harder than ever to mine a Bitcoin block. pic.twitter.com/rAVb9SdUgI
— BitKE (@BitcoinKE) April 8, 2023
The mining difficulty of Bitcoin is adjusted automatically approximately every two weeks in response to changes in the hashrate of the network. This adjustment is necessary to maintain a block processing time of approximately 10 minutes and prevent the network from either slowing down or speeding up over time.
The latest rise in Bitcoin mining difficulty marks the fourth consecutive increase, with the previous three increases being 9.95%, 1.16%, and 7.56% as highlighted on btc.com. These increases indicate that the network has been responding to the gradual growth of the hashrate.
Most Recent Increases in Mining DifficultyThe most recent adjustment to the block difficulty has pushed the difficulty metric to a new all-time high of 47.89 trillion, making it more challenging than ever to mine a block and obtain a bitcoin. The next difficulty adjustment is expected to occur in about 12 days.
The average computation power, or hashrate, of the entire Bitcoin network has also reached an all-time high of 342.16 EH/s. Meanwhile, the average block verification and production time, known as block times, remains below ten minutes.
At the same time, while bitcoin’s network difficulty and hash rate increased, making the network more expensive to mine, so has miner revenue increased. Miners receive bitcoins, the native currency of the blockchain, as a reward for validating blocks and processing transactions. The revenue earned by miners takes into account both inflation rewards, known as block subsidies, and transaction fees.
While most miner revenue comes from the block subsidy – 6.25 BTC per block right now – which is a constant in BTC terms, transaction fees are also a way for miners to generate revenue.
In March 2023, bitcoin miners earned almost $732 million from block subsidies, which is their primary source of revenue. When transaction fees are added to this figure, their total earnings amounted to $755 million. Despite this increase, their profitability still falls significantly below the all-time highs.
The rise in revenue for bitcoin miners is closely linked to the value of the cryptocurrency they are mining. Since the beginning of the year, the price of bitcoin has surged by 69%, and in the past month alone, it has risen by nearly 26%. This increase in value has more than offset the higher costs associated with mining resulting in higher profitability for miners.
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