Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Hits ATH in Last Adjustment Before Halving

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty has set yet another record high at 86.39 trillion in the last adjustment before the halving, according to data from Mempool.space.

The network difficulty went up by about 3.92% on Wednesday at block height 838,656 as miners across the world are racing to maximize their hashrate ahead of bitcoin’s fourth halving, currently expected to happen on April 20.

Bitcoin’s 7-day moving average hashrate has been increasing rapidly since the New Year, up 23% from around 510 EH/s in early January to all-time highs of over 630 EH/s at the moment.

As a result of the record difficulty, bitcoin’s hashprice has dropped to around $105/PH/s, according to data from Luxor’s Hashrate Index. It is expected to reduce by 50% immediately after the halving.

Bitcoin’s hashrate has increased significantly over the past four years, an epoch where block subsidies were down to 6.25 BTC.

The last adjustment ahead of the previous halving, which happened in May 2020, set bitcoin’s difficulty to just over 16 trillion. At the time, the network average hashrate was around 115 EH/s. Since then, bitcoin’s hashrate has more than five-folded despite China’s mining ban in 2021 and the bear market environment throughout 2022.