Bitcoin mining difficulty sets new high of 86T pre-halving

Bitcoin mining difficulty and hash rate continue to increase ahead of the halving, a major industry event expected to occur in eight days.

The difficulty of mining Bitcoin (BTC) continues to grow ahead of the historic halving event, which is poised to cut miner rewards by 50%.

Bitcoin mining difficulty has experienced another adjustment before the upcoming Bitcoin halving, hitting a new all-time high of 86.4 trillion, according to data from BTC.com.

The latest adjustment, which occurred on April 10, increased the Bitcoin mining difficulty by 3.4% from the previous difficulty level of 83 trillion, which was set on March 28.

The latest Bitcoin mining difficulty adjustment is likely the last one happening before the halving.

According to BTC.com, the next Bitcoin mining difficulty adjustment will occur in 13 days, or around April 24. In the meantime, the Bitcoin halving is expected to occur in eight days, or on April 19, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Bitcoin mining difficulty measures how hard and time-consuming it is to mine a new block or solve mathematical puzzles under Bitcoin’s proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism.

BTC mining difficulty adjustment occurs every 2,016 blocks, or approximately every two weeks, as Bitcoin is programmed to self-adjust the difficulty level to maintain a target block time of 10 minutes.

The mining difficulty directly depends on the Bitcoin blockchain hash rate, a unit measuring miners’ computational power to produce new bitcoins.

In line with the increasing Bitcoin mining difficulty, the BTC hash rate has seen a significant increase recently, surging from around 619 exahashes per second (EH/s) on March 28 to 696 EH/s on April 10, according to BTC.com.

Unlike the difficulty, which saw an all-time on April 10, the Bitcoin hash rate posted an all-time high earlier.

Related: Bitcoin miners may ‘fear’ the halving, but they cherish it too

According to data from BitInfoCharts, the Bitcoin hash rate reached an all-time high of 727.9 EH/s on March 24.

Some analysts predict that the BTC hash rate will likely drop after the upcoming Bitcoin halving in 2024.

According to Galaxy’s mining analysts, as much as 20% of Bitcoin’s current hash rate could go offline after the Bitcoin halving, as many miners will likely turn off their mining rigs due to lowered efficiency post-halving.

The analysts said that more than 70% of the Bitcoin hash rate was churned out by eight ASIC miner models by the end of 2023.