BTC Mining Difficulty Passes 80 Trillion Ahead of Halving

BTC mining difficulty passed 80T with a hash rate of 562.81 exahashes per second and BTC incentives will drop from 6.25 to 3.125 BTC.

On Friday, February 16, the mining difficulty which is a measure of how tough it is to solve the mathematical problem connected with a block, crossed 80 trillion.

According to BTC.com, the network’s hash rate which gauges the combined processing power of miners reached 562.81 exahashes per second (EH/s), while the mining difficulty reached a record 81.73 trillion.

Since January 2023, the difficulty of BTC mining has been increasing significantly and in the coming months, it is predicted to reach $100 trillion. The mining difficulty of Bitcoin’s proof-of-work system quantifies how challenging it is to add a new block to the blockchain.

In order to find the right hash, BTC mining need to use more processing power and energy when the difficulty level rises. The difficulty level of BTC mining has more than doubled in the past year.

When Bitcoin’s automated readjustment occurred on February 15, the mining difficulty was predicted to rise by 6%.

If it materializes, it will push the difficulty to new all-time highs and surpass 80 trillion for the first time according to statistics from the monitoring portal BTC.com.

Around the time of the Wall Street opening on February 16, Bitcoin remained around $52,000 as the most recent US macro data exceeded forecasts.

Up until the final TradFi trading session of the week, the price of bitcoin remained steady, according to data from TradingView and Markets Pro. The “Bitcoin Halving” will occur in late April and reduce BTC mining payouts by half. Roughly every four years, Bitcoin’s coders integrate the reduction into the token’s structure to combat inflation.

The mining incentive for Bitcoin was last halved in May 2020. With the impending halving, Bitcoin incentives will drop from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. Because it will be harder for less productive miners to make ends meet and quit, this adjustment may lead to a decrease in the hash rate.

Since the network strives to maintain a consistent block creation every 10 minutes, a lower hash rate is probably going to result in a lower level of difficulty for Bitcoin miners.

Galaxy’s mining researchers predict that following the Bitcoin halving which will see block rewards cut in half and just the most productive mining rigs remaining, up to 20% of Bitcoin’s current hash power could become unavailable.