Cryptocurrency mining difficulty reached a new peak on January 15, 2023, increasing by 10.26% to 37.73 Billion at a block height of 772,128. The network’s difficulty is at its highest level ever, requiring an average of 37.73 trillion hashes or attempts to find a valid Bitcoin block reward and add it to the blockchain.
The first difficulty increase of 2023 is greater than all but one difficulty increase of 2022
As of 8:15 PM ET on Sunday, January 15, 2023, the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain was dedicated to an approximate hashrate of 286.36 exahash (EH/s). The network experienced difficulty retargeting at 4:11 PM ET at block height 772 128, which led to a 10.26% increase.
The maximum difficulty last week was 34.09 trillion and reached an all-time high (ATH) of 37.73 billion on Sunday, making it very difficult to locate a block of BTC. Before the January 15th difficulty increase, the highest difficulty of the Bitcoin blockchain was 36.76 trillion on December 31, 2017.
The current difficulty is 2.63% higher than the previous maximum. The difficulty increase of January 15th is also the highest of all except one of the difficulty increases of last year. The highest difficulty of the Bitcoin blockchain was recorded on October 10, 2022, at Block 758,016, when there was an increase of 13.55%. The Bitcoin price has risen 22.7% in the last seven days. However, the 10.26% difficulty increase will make the gains tighter.
The new year began with a bang as the network hashrate reached an all-time high of 361.20 exahash per second (EH/s) on January 6, 2023, at a height of 770.709. This record was previously set at 347.16 EH/s on November 12, 2022. A high hash rate leads to shorter block intervals and higher difficulty, which is what was observed on Sunday afternoon.
Two records have been set in the first month of 2023, making it a remarkable year for miners. According to macromicro.me data, one unit of ETH is currently worth $17,377, while one BTC is trading at $20,876.
The concentration of mining pools has also increased dramatically, with two mining facilities commanding more than 56.68% of the global hashrate in the last three days. The most powerful mining pool is Foundry USA, which commands 97.03 Exahash per Second (EH/s) of hashrate, followed by Antpool’s 55.92 EH/s.
The next difficulty change is expected to occur around January 28, 2023. The current block interval is 8 minutes and 26 seconds. In the past 2016 blocks, the average hash rate was around 268.1 exahashes per second (EH/s). As of writing, there are still 67,846 blocks to mine before the next reward is halved and a total of 1,736,531.23 BTC is left to be discovered.