After seeing a minor decline of 0.49% on February 12, 2023, the cryptocurrency network is likely to experience a significant surge three days from now, February 24. Estimates suggest that the difficulty could experience the largest increase in the past 12 months, surpassing the 10.26% rise that occurred on January 15 at block 772.128.
It’s Estimated the Following Difficulty Adjustment Could Increase by 10.78-11.5% or More
In 2022, the Bitcoin hashrate remained above 200 exhash per second (EH/s). However, in 2023, 300 EH/s is the new norm. Statistics show that within the last 2,016 blocks of the blockchain, the average hashrate value was around 310.5 EH/s. Additionally, the bitcoin block times have varied from 8 minutes 55 to 8 minutes 68 seconds, which is much faster than the 10-minute standard. This rapid block time and excessive hashrate indicate a significant rise in difficulty and this is what is expected to happen on February 24.
The following difficulty adjustment is scheduled to take place on Friday and would be the largest in the past 12 months, surpassing earlier reports from January 15. The estimated increase for the February 24 adjustment is expected to be between 10.78-11.5%. The current difficulty is around 39.16 trillion hashes. The next difficulty adjustment is likely to increase it to over 40 trillion. A 10.78% increase would result in a difficulty score equivalent to 43.35 Trillion hashes. Regardless, an increase in difficulty will make it harder for bitcoin miners to locate new blocks.
At the time of writing, mining pool Foundry USA has 33.33% of the total hashrate with 105.37 EH/s. Antpool accounts for around 18.66% of all the world’s hashrate with 58.98 EH/s devoted to the Bitcoin blockchain. Together, these two pools account for over 51% of the pie, which includes 13 pools and 11.93 EH/s of unknown hash power. Following Foundry and Antpool are F2Pool, Binance Pool, and Viabtc which manage 33.54% of the global hashrate. These top 5 pools contribute 84.54% to the total hashrate, which provides security to the Bitcoin network.
What do you think of the expected significant increase in difficulty? Let us know your thoughts on the matter in the comment section below.
