Bitcoin Mining
Hashrate Follows Price, Leading Mining Difficulty to a New All-Time High — Bitcoin Mining Diffculty Adjustment Overview
The latest difficulty adjustment, effective at block height 808,416; increased mining difficulty by 5.48%. In this overview, we’ll analyze the effects on mining and profitability.
Bitcoin’s Total Hashrate
When the market sentiment was mostly bearish, Bitcoin surprised everyone by surging past the $27,000 line in a matter of hours.
As it usually happens in this kind of situation, miners swiftly capitalized on the opportunity, firing up their ASIC miners to enjoy the boost in profitability.
As a result, hashrate grew in parallel with price, averaging 408.71 EH/s at the time of the latest difficulty adjustment — its highest level ever at the conclusion of a mining epoch.
Bitcoin’s Mining Difficulty
You know the drill. If the mining epoch ends with higher hashrate than the previous one, difficulty goes up — especially if it’s a new all-time high!
Therefore, mining difficulty reached a new maximum as well, and as we’ve become used to saying lately: it has never been harder to mine a Bitcoin block than in it is today.
Difficulty is now sitting at 57.12T, marking a 5.48% increase compared to the previous mining epoch, which had started with a negative adjustment.
Hashprice, or Mining Revenue per TH/s
With hashrate and price going hand-in-hand, mining profitability remained stable, dropping by less than one cent after the increase in difficulty.
Indeed, on September 18 — the day before the adjustment—miners were earning approximately $0.065 per TH/s.
After the difficulty change, hashprice dropped 1.53% to $0.064 — although still higher than last adjustment’s $0.061.
Nevertheless, the fine print says that with difficulty at its highest levels ever, the current mining profitability is extremely reliant on price. In other words, a Bitcoin correction would make hashprice plummet, hurting miners — at least until the next adjustment.
The Difficulty Adjustment in Numbers
- Difficulty adjustment block height: 808,416
- Date of the adjustment: 09/18/2023
- Average hashrate at the time of the adjustment: 408.71 EH/s
- Previous difficulty: 54.15T
- Current difficulty: 57.12T
- Difficulty change: +5.48%
- Miner revenue per TH/s (hashprice) after adjustment: $0.064
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