Bitcoin mining difficulty increased by 6.8% for the last recount

The difficulty of mining Bitcoin continues to grow. At the last recount, it increased by 6.8% and reached 15,486,913,440 293 with a hash rate of 121.6 ech / s.

Mining difficulty increased tonightalmost 7%. The next change in difficulty level is expected on March 21. Despite the coronavirus epidemic, course correction and the approaching halving of the reward, miners continue to build capacity. Today's increase in complexity is far from the records of previous years, but amid a general fall inspires optimism.

Bitcoin mining difficulty level is changingapproximately every two weeks - every 2,016 blocks. As more and more miners increase the hash rate of the network, the complexity of PoW increases, making it difficult to receive block rewards. If suddenly the miners massively stop working, the complexity will decrease to maintain balance.

The higher the mining difficulty, the more difficultto attack the network. According to recent data from analytics company Messari, the cost of a successful 51% attack on Bitcoin blockchain is more than $ 21 million per day. For comparison, a similar attack on the Ethereum network costs about $ 2.7 million.

The current increase in mining difficulty is caused beforetotal approaching halving of the award for the block, which is two months away. Now both new models of miners and old equipment are working, from which the “last juices” are striving to squeeze out, since after halving in May it (without taking off the BTC price) will become unprofitable. After halving the award, a sharp drop in complexity is likely, which will be gradually offset by the commissioning of new batches of the most energy-efficient ASIC miners.

Recall that the last serious fallmining difficulties occurred in November last year. Then the mining difficulty of Bitcoin for one recount fell by 7%, and this decrease became the largest in 2019. Earlier, a similar drop occurred in December 2018.