Bitcoin’s mining difficulty target is expected to increase on the 19th of December, 2022, following the biggest reduction on the 5th of December, at block height 766,080. Over the past 2,016 blocks, the Bitcoin network’s hash rate has been around 254.3 exhash per second (EH/s), while block intervals have been faster at 9:41 minutes per block.

Bitcoin Difficulty Expected To Rise By 3% on Dec 19, Bitcoin Average Mining Costs Higher Than Current Spot Market Value

In the next 24 hours, the Bitcoin network is set to experience yet another difficult transition. This time, it is expected to increase by between 3.2% and 3.76% from its current value of 34.24 trillion, resulting in a total of 35.53 trillion on the 19th of December, 2022.

Data shows that the difficulty of the network has been growing, even as the BTC hashrate has been lower than the previous month. Bitcoin’s hashrate peaked at 361 EH/s on the 1st of December, 2022. Block intervals, or average block times, are around 9:41 and 10:43 minutes respectively.

This 3% change is following the last difficulty modification, which saw an average decrease of 7.32% on the 5th of December at block 766,080. That day, the network’s mining difficulty target saw the biggest decrease in 2022. On average, the increase on the 19th of December, 2022 will be around 3%, erasing some of the last reduction and making it harder for miners to find a Bitcoin block.

Over the past three days, Foundry USA has been the largest mining pool on the Bitcoin network with 27.05% or 66.59 EH/s of the overall hashrate. It is followed by Antpool (53.51 EH/s), F2pool (35.08 EH/s), Binance Pool (31.51 EH/s) and Viabtc (22 EH/s). During the same period, 414 block rewards have been discovered, with the five previously mentioned mining pools discovering 351 blocks.

As of the 17th of December, statistics from Macromicro.me show the average cost of Bitcoin mining based on metrics from the University of Cambridge. This implies that, on average, mining Bitcoin costs around $19,806, while on the 18th of December it was around $16,700 per Bitcoin.