The challenge of mining Bitcoin (BTC) continues to increase as the highly anticipated halving event approaches, which will reduce miner rewards by 50%.
Data from BTC.com shows that Bitcoin mining difficulty has recently reached a new record high of 86.4 trillion, following the latest adjustment on April 10. This adjustment increased the difficulty by 3.4% from the previous level of 83 trillion, set on March 28.
This adjustment is likely the final one before the halving. The next adjustment is expected to occur in approximately 13 days, around April 24. The halving itself is projected to take place in eight days, on April 19, according to CoinMarketCap.
Bitcoin mining difficulty is a measure of the difficulty and time required to mine a new block or solve mathematical puzzles under Bitcoin’s proof-of-work consensus mechanism. The difficulty adjusts every 2,016 blocks, or roughly every two weeks, to maintain a target block time of 10 minutes.
The difficulty level is directly influenced by the hash rate of the Bitcoin blockchain, which measures miners’ computational power in producing new BTC. As the mining difficulty has increased, so has the hash rate, rising from around 619 exahashes per second (EH/s) on March 28 to 696 EH/s on April 10, according to BTC.com.
While the difficulty reached an all-time high on April 10, the hash rate achieved its all-time high earlier on March 24, reaching 727.9 EH/s, according to BitInfoCharts.
Analysts predict that the hash rate may decrease after the upcoming halving in 2024. They estimate that up to 20% of Bitcoin’s current hash rate could go offline as miners shut down their rigs due to reduced efficiency post-halving. By the end of 2023, eight ASIC miner models were responsible for more than 70% of the Bitcoin hash rate.
It is worth noting that some analysts believe that the issue lies with decentralized finance (DeFi) rather than the market itself, as stated by the founder of Synthetix in a recent interview.