Bitcoin mining difficulty rose by 9.3% on Wednesday, marking the biggest jump since January and the second highest level on record, according to data from BTC.com.
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Fast facts
- The mining difficulty reading was at 30.98 trillion, as of block height 751,968, the data showed.
- The difficulty level, which changes about every two weeks, hit an all-time high on May 11 at 31.25 trillion.
- 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 seven-day average hashrate was at around 224.7 exahashes per second on Tuesday, up from a seven-day average of 197.7 exahashes on Aug. 18 when the previous difficulty adjustment occurred, Blockchain.com data showed.
- Bitcoin was trading at US$20,254 at 3 p.m. on Wednesday Hong Kong time, down 0.7% in the past 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
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