On-chain data shows the Bitcoin Difficulty is set to see yet another increase in the coming adjustment, as miners continue to expand aggressively.
Bitcoin Difficulty Is Estimated To Reach A New Record
The “Difficulty” refers to a feature built into the Bitcoin network that controls how hard the miners would find it to mine a block. This metric’s value changes about every two weeks in ‘adjustments‘ controlled entirely by the cryptocurrency’s code.
As for how exactly the blockchain would change the Difficulty during an adjustment comes down to the pace at which the miners were performing their task since the last adjustment. Satoshi wrote in a simple goal for the network: keep the block production time constant at 10 minutes.
This means that if the miners are mining a block in an average of less than 10 minutes, the chain would be forced to up its Difficulty to slow these validators down by a degree just enough to bring them back to the standard rate. Similarly, miners being slow would lead to the network easing up the metric’s value.
In the last couple of weeks, the miners have been faster than needed. Here are the details related to the upcoming adjustment, according to CoinWarz:
Looks like the block time on the chain has stood at 9.8 minutes | Source: CoinWarz
As is visible above, the Bitcoin miners have produced each block in an average time of 9.80 minutes since the last adjustment. Based on this value, the network is estimated to raise its Difficulty by over 2% tomorrow, April 19th. This jump would take the metric to a new all-time high (ATH) of about 124 terahashes.
The indicator has been on the way up for a while now, with this upcoming adjustment acting as the fourth addition to the streak.
The trend in the BTC Difficulty during the last few months | Source: CoinWarz
The previous adjustment was a notably larger increase than the estimated jump for tomorrow and took the metric to the current ATH of 121.5 terahashes. Thus, the miners have already been having it tough in the last couple of weeks and the pressure is only going to increase.
As mentioned before, the blockchain increases its Difficulty whenever the miners become faster than intended. This happens when these validators expand their facilities, adding more machines to their computing power pool, called the Hashrate.
Given that the network has constantly been upping its Difficulty recently, the miners would currently be in a phase of expansion. And indeed, the 7-day chart from Blockchain.com confirms this.
The value of the metric appears to have been climbing up in recent days | Source: Blockchain.com
As displayed in the above graph, miners have seen their Hashrate go up in a sharp manner recently, which means they have aggressively been adding to their farms. This expansion is impressive, considering the fact that the Bitcoin price has been bearish recently.
BTC Price
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $84,400, up over 2% in the last seven days.
The price of the coin appears to have been moving sideways recently | Source: BTCUSDT on TradingView
