Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Adjustment
Bitcoin hashrate and difficulty slow down, giving miners a much-needed break
Analyzing Bitcoin’s difficulty adjustment and mining profitability
The latest difficulty adjustment, effective at block height 762,048, decreased mining difficulty by 0.20%. In this overview, we’ll analyze the effects on mining and profitability.
Bitcoin’s total hashrate
Hashrate swung up and down throughout the entire epoch, even reaching new all-time highs. Yet, what determines the difficulty change is the average hashrate at the adjustment’s block height — in this case, block #762,048.
In that regard, hashrate at that block height was 263.14 EH/s — slightly lower than the last adjustment’s 263.63 EH/s.
Bitcoin’s mining difficulty
This adjustment’s timing was favorable for miners, as it hit right on time to drop difficulty, even if just a bit. The latest Bitcoin mining adjustment lowered difficulty by 0.20%, dropping to 36.76T.
This comes as the first downward adjustment since September, and after two consecutive increases where difficulty hit all-time high. Although it’s a mild change, it’s still a breath of fresh air for many miners.
Hashprice, or mining revenue per TH/s
Miners will be glad to hear that mining profitability improved over the last week. Amidst a brief Bitcoin recovery over $21K and the recent difficulty drop, hashprice managed to reach $0.074.
This marks a 7.24% increase from the $0.069 revenue per TH/s after the previous adjustment, and the first significant improvement since September.
Bitcoin mining profitability overview
This week’s adjustment and the recent price action come as much-needed good news for miners, who have been taking one hit after the other. Now, they can enjoy relative stability, at least for a couple of weeks.
Yet, there’s still a long way to go for them to thicken their margins back to a sustainable level. The storm is far from over, and miners still have to navigate it.
One thing is for certain, though, and that is that it will be much easier if we keep seeing more weeks like this last one in the future.
The difficulty adjustment in numbers
- Difficulty adjustment block height: 762,048
- Date of the adjustment: 11/07/2022
- Average hashrate at the time of the adjustment: 263.14 EH/s
- Previous difficulty: 36.84T
- Current difficulty: 36.76T
- Difficulty change: -0.20%
- Miner revenue per TH/s (hashprice) after adjustment: $0.074
