Bitcoin mining difficulty rose by 1.74% on Thursday following three consecutive drops in previous adjustments, according to data from BTC.com.

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Fast facts

  • The mining difficulty reading was at 28.17 trillion, as of block height 747,936, the data showed.
  • The difficulty level, which changes about every two weeks, recorded its largest fall in a year during the last adjustment on July 22.
  • Bitcoin mining difficulty is a measure of how hard a miner would have to work to verify transactions in a block to add to the blockchain, or “dig out” Bitcoins.
  • Such mining difficulty adjustments are highly correlated to changes in the mining hashrate — the level of computing power used for mining.
  • Bitcoin’s hashrate was at around 197.4 exahashes per second on Thursday on a seven-day average, slightly up from 195.9 exahashes on July 22, Blockchain.com data showed.
  • Bitcoin was trading at US$22,925 as of 10 a.m. on Friday in Hong Kong, down 1.1% over 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

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