Bitcoin mining difficulty increases as profitability decreases

Bitcoin mining is set to see a significant rise in the near future, approaching its all-time high in May (ATH) at a time when competition among miners is growing while profitability is decreasing. It is currently estimated by mining pool BTC.com that bitcoin mining difficulty, or the measure of how difficult it is to compete for mining rewards, will rise 6.49% on Saturday. This would be the fourth highest increase since ATH.

Also, it would bring the difficulty down to the level of 23.78 T, closer to the mid-May ATH of 25.05 T. This increase follows a decrease relatively small, but significant, as it broke the longest revenue streak seen since 2018.



Meanwhile, the hashrate, or computational power of the network, is also increasing from the previous difficulty setting. While it stood at 156.06 E on November 28, the 7-day moving average jumped to 180.98 E recorded on December 9, an increase of nearly 16% in less than two weeks.

The profitability of bitcoin mining has taken the exact opposite direction. It fell 9.4% in the same time frame that BTC's price fell nearly 20% in the past two weeks. Bitcoin mining difficulty is adjusted every two weeks to maintain the normal block time of 10 minutes. The 7-day moving average freeze time on Dec 9 was 8.8 minutes.