Bitcoin mining difficulty drops 3.6% in latest adjustment

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty level fell 3.59% on Tuesday morning in Asia, after some U.S. mining firms unplugged due to deadly winter storms over the holiday season on top of continued cash shortages mainly caused by low Bitcoin prices and high energy costs.

See related article: Bitcoin hashrate drops nearly 40% as deadly U.S. storm unplugs miners

Fast facts

• The mining difficulty reading came in at 34.09 trillion at block height 770,112 in Tuesday’s biweekly adjustment, following a 3.27% rise in the previous adjustment on Dec. 19, according to data from BTC.com.
• The latest Bitcoin mining difficulty reading was nearly 40% higher than on Jan. 8 of last year, when the difficulting reading was at 24.37 trillion.
• Bitcoin mining difficulty, which determines how much computing power is required to verify blocks on the blockchain in exchange for Bitcoins rewards, changes roughly every two weeks.
• Bitcoin’s seven-day average hashrate, a measure of computational power used by miners, was at around 256.7 exahashes per second on Monday, down from a seven-day average of 245.1 exahashes on Dec. 19, Blockchain.com data showed.
• Bitcoin’s price reached an all-time high of more than US$67,000 in November 2021, but has since fallen 75% to trade at around US$16,695 on Tuesday noon in Asia, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
• The profitability rate of Bitcoin mining stood at US$0.058 per terahash per second in the past 24 hours, down from US$0.233 from a year ago, data from BitInfoCharts showed.
• Many U.S.-based miners were forced to switch down their facilities last month due to deadly blizzards.

See related article: U.S. crypto miner Core Scientific files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, continues to mine Bitcoin

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