After climbing 5.56% higher than two weeks ago, Bitcoin recorded a lifetime high in mining difficulty on April 27 at block height 733,824. This also suggests that Bitcoin’s difficulty is approaching 30 trillion, as the current difficulty is 29.79 trillion after Wednesday’s jump.
After block 733,824 was mined yesterday, history witnessed the most difficult time to mine the world’s top cryptocurrency by market valuation. Until the next change in difficulty level, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty will remain 29.79 trillion for the next two weeks.
Following an all-time high on Saturday, at block 733,197, Bitcoin’s hashrate is now at 252.39 exahash per second (EH/s). The hashrate peaked at 271.19 EH/s at that time.
The difficulty is expected to reduce 0.07% during the next adjustment, though this estimate could alter in the following two weeks. Bitcoin miners were given a respite on April 14 when the difficulty lowered by 1.26% at block height 731,808.
An estimated hashrate of 201.8 EH/s was recorded over the last three months. On or around May 10, 2022, the next difficulty retarget is expected. At the moment, the block subsidy of 6.25 BTC is around £196,913 at latest exchange rates.
At press time, there are 106,167 blocks till the next halving, with about half of the time between halvings passed. In about 48 hours, the midway point until the halving will be reached in terms of block count.
On or around April 27, 2024, the halving is projected to take place. After that, the block subsidy will be slashed by half, from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.
Foundry USA was the top miner on April 27, 2022, and for the previous three days, taking 87 of the 473 blocks mined. Foundry controls 18.39% of the hashrate, or 41.05 EH/s. Antpool is Foundry’s closest competitor in terms of three-day pool statistics, having discovered 75 of the 473 blocks mined. Antpool’s hashrate is around 35.39 EH/s, or 15.86% of global processing power.