The difficulty of mining Bitcoin has dropped a further 4.81% in its latest fortnightly adjustment, according to data from BTC.com, bringing it to the lowest point since January last year.
Fast facts
- The decline marks the fourth consecutive drop in the difficulty rate for the world’s leading cryptocurrency — the longest slide in its history. After hitting an all-time high of 25 trillion points in mid-May, it has dropped to 13.7 trillion points following China’s crackdown on mining.
- The difficulty rate refers to how difficult it is to verify transactions on the block, and it is adjusted every 2,016 blocks — roughly every two weeks. It is also highly correlated to Bitcoin’s hashrate, which corresponds to the amount of computing power required to secure the network. That has also been declining in recent months, although it had recovered slightly to 99.74 exa hashes per second as of press time.
- Despite the exodus of miners from China, the country still accounts for more than 46% of Bitcoin’s total hashrate, according to data from the University of Cambridge’s Center for Alternative Finance. Although that is a significant portion, it is down 20% from the highs it reached in April.