The latest difficulty adjustment, effective at block height 804,384; increased mining difficulty by 6.17%. In this overview, we’ll analyze the effects on mining and profitability.
After a brief period of relative stability, Bitcoin’s hashrate reached yet another all-time high.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise, as it coincides with a historical trend regarding the Bitcoin mining ecosystem: hashrate tends to follow price with a few weeks of lag.
However, timing didn’t really play out for miners this time. Just when they were catching up with Bitcoin’s rally to $30K, they were hit with a strong correction back to $26K.
Despite this, hashrate at the time of the adjustment still managed to average 397.74 EH/s — a new all time-high for difficulty adjustments — and keeps growing as we approach the next mining epoch.
Naturally, a new hashrate all-time high has also led to a new high in difficulty.
Indeed, mining a new Bitcoin block has become 6.17% more difficult. Difficulty is now sitting at 55.62T — its maximum level ever.
The two factors with the heaviest weight on Bitcoin mining profitability are price action and mining difficulty.
Bitcoin’s price determines the dollar value of miners’ proceeds. Difficulty, on the other hand, determines the earning rate.
In this particular adjustment, both these factors coincided to make profitability plummet. Bitcoin’s price dropped, while difficulty increased.
Therefore, hashprice — the amount of dollars miners make per terahash produced per second, decreased from $0.071 to $0.061 — lows unseen since March. This constitutes a whopping 14.08% drop.
- Difficulty adjustment block height: 804,384
- Date of the adjustment: 08/22/2023
- Average hashrate at the time of the adjustment: 397.74 EH/s
- Previous difficulty: 52.39T
- Current difficulty: 55.62T
- Difficulty change: +6.17%
- Miner revenue per TH/s (hashprice) after adjustment: $0.061
