Although the price of Bitcoin fell below US$20,000 for the first time since mid-June after sliding 7% in the 24 hours following Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s hawkish speech, the number of addresses holding over 0.1 bitcoin hit all-time-high on Sunday. This was despite mining difficulty for the crypto likely to see its third-highest ever in the next adjustment.

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Fast facts

  • A July report by crypto data research firm Glassnode said that investors putting small investments into Bitcoin consistently grew since mid-May, despite the multibillion dollar Terra-LUNA debacle.
  • Bitcoin mining will likely see its fourth difficulty increase in August. According to data from BTC.com, the Bitcoin mining difficulty has risen three times in August. The next time the difficulty may rise to 30.28 trillion as of 5 p.m. Hong Kong time prediction, making it the third time in history that the problem has exceeded 30 trillion.
  • A higher difficulty level for Bitcoin mining reflects the complexity of solving a problem to unlock the crypto with significantly more resources needed. 
  • Charles Edwards, founder of quantitative crypto fund Capriole Investments, said in a CNBC report last week that increased mining difficulty combined with the 10-day moving average price of Bitcoin moving higher than the 20-day moving average price could signal the next price increase for BTC.
  • This comes as the price of Bitcoin is down more than 71% from its all time high of US$68,789.63 on Nov 10, 2021, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

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