The difficulty in mining a block of Bitcoin (BTC) was reduced by 5% more to 27.693 trillion as network difficulty maintains its three-month-long downward streak ever since May 2022 while reaching an all-time high of 31.251T.
Network difficulty is a means Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto developed to confirm the acceptability of all transactions using raw computing power. The reduced problem allows Bitcoin miners to confirm transactions using lower resources, enabling smaller miners a fighting chance to earn the mining rewards.
Despite the minor setback, zooming out on blockchain.com’s data reveals that Bitcoin continues to operate as the most resilient and immutable blockchain network. While the difficulty adjustment is directly relational to the hashing power of miners, the total hash rate (TH/s) recovered 3.2% along similar timelines, as shown below.
At its highest, the Bitcoin hash rate reached an all-time high of 231.428 exahash per second (EH/s) when BTC prices fell to $25,000 in June — raising momentary concerns around extensive power usage.
As China banned all crypto trading and mining operations in June 2021, the United States picked up slack in becoming the highest contributor to the global Bitcoin hash rate. However, Chinese miners resumed operations in September 2021.
According to the Cointelegraph report, miners see falling GPU prices as a means to offset operational costs amid an ongoing bear market.
Facilitation concerns related to excessive power usage; a report released by the Bitcoin Mining Council uncovered that nearly 60% of the electricity used for BTC mining comes from sustainable sources.
The study also claimed that BTC mining accounted for just 0.09% of the 34.8 billion metric tons of carbon emissions estimated to be produced globally and consumed just 0.15% of the global energy supply.
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