Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Set for a New All-Time High

Bitcoin (BTC) mining may rise to become the most difficult it’s ever been in five days from now. Meanwhile, miners continue spending.

If the BTC.com estimates come true, bitcoin mining difficulty, or the measure of how hard it is to compete for mining rewards, will rise nearly 3% during its next adjustment, which would bring it up to 17.45 T – a new all-time high.

Previous all-time high was 17.35 T, seen three adjustments ago, in mid-July. The difficulty kept to the upper end of 16 T since then, sitting near the border with 17 T as the level it had reached only that one time in July. Perhaps the second time will be in five days.

Meanwhile, the hashrate (the computational power of the network) has been experiencing some trouble. As reported yesterday, it dropped some 25% in just three days as heavy rainfalls and flooding hit Southwest China’s Sichuan province.

Some of the miners were forced to unplug their machines due to internet access and electricity being cut off, or even proactively ensure the safety of onsite personnel, as Kevin Pan, CEO and co-founder of the major bitcoin mining pool PoolIn, said.

Per BitInfoCharts.com, BTC hashrate dropped 4% in the last 24 hours. A 7-day simple moving average (chart below) shows a rise until August 16, as well as a subsequent 2% drop until August 18.

As a reminder, the mining difficulty of Bitcoin is adjusted every two weeks (or more precisely, every 2016 blocks) to maintain the normal 10-minute block time.

On the other hand, while the price of bitcoin keeps moving around the USD 12,000 mark, miners have continued spending more of their BTC than it was generated. For example, a week ago, 377 coins more were sold than generated.

BTC is currently (6:51 UTC) trading at USD 11,779. It dropped 3.9% in a day and went up 4% in a week.