Bitcoin Hashrate Reaches All-Time High, Boost Could Lead to Record-Setting Difficulty Increase

During the first week of the new year, Bitcoin’s hashrate reached an all-time high (ATH) on Jan. 6, 2023, at block height 770,709. The network recorded a milestone of around 361.20 exahash per second (EH/s) on Friday, jumping more than 4% higher than the previous record of 347.16 EH/s recorded on Nov. 12, 2022.

Network’s Hashpower Surges to New Heights, Difficulty Change Anticipated in Eight Days

Bitcoin’s computational power is running hot during the first week of the new year as it broke its first record in 2023. According to statistics on Jan. 7, Bitcoin’s hashrate is currently coasting along at 290 EH/s after reaching its all-time high (ATH) the day prior. The ATH occurred on Jan. 6 at 3:42 p.m. ET at block height 770,709, when the network’s total hashpower reached 361.20 EH/s. This record equates to 0.3611999 zettahash per second (ZH/s) or roughly 361.2 quintillion hashes per second.

The Jan. 6 record was more than 4% higher than the Nov. 12, 2022 record of around 347.16 EH/s, printed at block height 762,845. Because the hashrate has been so high, block generation times have been much faster than the 10-minute average. Statistics show that current block intervals (the time between mined blocks) have been between 8:51 and 7:31 minutes. Data also shows that the cost of BTC production has dropped. Metrics from macromicro.me indicate that the cost of bitcoin production is $16,568 per unit, while the spot price is $16,920 per unit.

Statistics from theminermag.com show that the cost of bitcoin production might even be much lower, as the web portal shows the average cost at around $13.6K per unit. The faster block intervals will likely mean that the network’s difficulty will rise on or around Jan. 16, 2023, after a 3.59% decrease on the second day of the year. Current estimates for the difficulty change in more than eight days range from 7.04% to a record-setting 13.2% increase. On Oct. 10, 2022, there was a 13.55% increase, which was the largest upswing of the year.

On Jan. 7, 2023, three-day statistics show that Foundry USA is the top mining pool with 29.34% of the world’s total hashrate, or roughly 78.85 EH/s of hashpower. Foundry is followed by Antpool (20.04%), F2pool (16.74%), Viabtc (9.71%), and Binance Pool (7.85%), respectively. The processing power of the network reaching record highs suggests that Bitcoin’s blockchain is becoming more powerful, which is seen as a positive sign for the overall health of the Bitcoin network. However, as mentioned above, it can also have an impact on the difficulty of mining new blocks after the difficulty changes on Jan. 16 in eight days.

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