Bitcoin mining difficulty surges 31% since July

As the Bitcoin ( $84,585.00 ) (BTC) network hashrate continues recovering amid global miners accumulating more capacity, the cryptocurrency is getting increasingly difficult to mine.

On Sept. 21, the Bitcoin ( $84,585.00 ) network posted another mining difficulty adjustment, rising 3.2% to hit a difficulty rate of nearly 19 trillion, according to data from blockchain explorer BTC.com.

The latest adjustment makes up the fifth consecutive surge of Bitcoin ( $84,585.00 ) ’s mining difficulty since mid-July, with the difficulty rate increasing more than 31% from around 13.7 trillion, the lowest difficulty level since June 2020.

The new positive adjustments follow a batch of four consecutive difficulty drops that started with a nearly 16% decline in late May amid global ESG-related concerns over Bitcoin ( $84,585.00 ) as well as China’s nationwide crackdown on cryptocurrency mining.

Despite seeing five positive adjustments in a row, the current Bitcoin ( $84,585.00 ) mining difficulty rate is still far from the all-time high level of over 25 trillion recorded in May 2021.

Bitcoin ( $84,585.00 ) ’s 10 past mining difficulty adjustments. Source: BTC.com

Bitcoin ( $84,585.00 ) mining difficulty is a metric designed to reflect how hard it is to mine a Bitcoin ( $84,585.00 ) block, with a higher difficulty level requiring more computing power to verify transactions and mine new coins. The difficulty adjustment occurs every 2,016 blocks, or about every two weeks, as Bitcoin ( $84,585.00 ) is programmed to self-adjust in order to keep a target block time of 10 minutes.

Related: Bitcoin ( $84,585.00 ) mining estimated to represent 0.9% of global carbon emissions in 2030

The ongoing growth of BTC mining difficulty comes in parallel with a significant surge of the Bitcoin ( $84,585.00 ) hashrate, the total combined computational power used to mine and process BTC transactions. The Bitcoin ( $84,585.00 ) hashrate surged to 150 exahashes (EH/s) in late August after plummeting to as low as 52 EH/s in June, recovering to early June levels and indicating that miners were coming back online after China’s crackdown.

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