Bitcoin mining difficulty has dropped again by 15.95%. This news has caused a huge sensation in the cryptocurrency field like a bombshell. This decline created the second highest record in mining history and brought huge fluctuations and challenges to the entire industry. Let’s dive into the story and impact behind this incident.

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty has always been one of the focuses of market attention, and it directly affects the costs and benefits of mining. With the fluctuation of Bitcoin price and the adjustment of global mining computing power, changes in difficulty have become one of the indicators that are closely watched both inside and outside the industry. This 15.95% drop has people asking, what does this mean?

First, let’s review the fundamentals of Bitcoin mining difficulty. Difficulty adjustments are done automatically through the Bitcoin network protocol and are designed to keep Bitcoin’s output rate at approximately one block every ten minutes. When the computing power increases, the difficulty will increase, and vice versa. This automatic adjustment mechanism ensures the stable operation of the Bitcoin network, but it also makes mining more challenging.

We see something interesting in this 15.95% drop. First, this drop created the second highest record in Bitcoin mining history, showing the huge volatility and uncertainty in the market. Secondly, this large-scale adjustment may affect miners' income and enthusiasm for mining. As the difficulty decreases, mining will become easier, but it may also lead to increased competition in the market, posing greater challenges to miners.

In addition, this adjustment has also triggered speculation about the future trend of Bitcoin. Some people believe that the decrease in difficulty may bring more miners to join the market, thereby driving up the price of Bitcoin; while others worry that the decrease in difficulty may lead to a decrease in network security, thereby affecting the entire Bitcoin ecosystem. stability. These uncertainties and speculations make the future of Bitcoin more confusing, and also bring more thoughts and challenges to investors and miners.

In general, the news that Bitcoin mining difficulty has dropped again by 15.95% is not just a number, but also a topic that triggers thinking and discussion. Behind this incident lies the complexity and variability of the Bitcoin market, and also reflects the uncertainty and challenges in the entire cryptocurrency field. For everyone who pays attention to Bitcoin, this adjustment deserves serious consideration and in-depth discussion, because it may affect the future direction of the entire industry. Let’s wait and see what’s next for Bitcoin.

The four most famous international exchanges:

Binance INTL	OKX INTL	Gate.io INTL	Huobi INTL
China Line　APP DL	China Line　APP DL	China Line　APP DL	China Line　APP DL

Note: The above exchange logo is the official website registration link, and the text is the APP download link.

As an important indicator of competition among miners, Bitcoin mining difficulty has recently dropped by 15.95%. This is the second time in the history of Bitcoin that the mining difficulty has been significantly reduced. As of now, Bitcoin is the largest blockchain network in the world by market capitalization.

Due to the recent sharp drop in the price of Bitcoin, even if miners mine new Bitcoins, it is difficult to sell them at a high price. Therefore, the reduction of Bitcoin’s “mining difficulty” actually means that some miners have chosen to quit. This "mining game". The reduction in mining difficulty may be beneficial to those miners who are still "continuing to play" - because the reduction in mining difficulty means it is easier to produce new mines, and coupled with the reduction in the number of peer competition, a single miner can benefit from the daily mining output of Bitcoin. get more shares.

At approximately 3 a.m. UTC on March 26, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty was adjusted to 13.91T, and the difficulty index was significantly lower than the 16.55T in the previous adjustment cycle (March 9). Bitcoin has only seen a partial rebound since it suffered its worst sell-off in seven years two weeks ago.

Mining requires the use of powerful and power-hungry specialized computers, and these mining operations often pay their hefty bills by selling Bitcoin or borrowing money against it.

Second only to the second-largest reduction in Bitcoin mining difficulty, the third-largest difficulty reduction in Bitcoin history also reached 15.13%, a record set in December 2018 when Bitcoin prices plummeted. The largest mining difficulty drop in Bitcoin history dates back to October 2011.

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty is set to adjust every 2,016 blocks (which usually takes about 14 days) in order to keep the average block production interval around 10 minutes.

In a 14-day period, if more and more miners exit, the time it takes for the remaining miners to produce these 2016 blocks will increase due to a lack of sufficient computing. Therefore, in order to make the next cycle of Bitcoin less difficult to mine, the Bitcoin ecosystem must lower its mining difficulty.

Likewise, if there is a large influx of miners in any 14-day cycle, this will shorten the average block production interval, which means that Bitcoin will increase the mining difficulty in the next cycle. As a result, individual miners will generate fewer Bitcoins due to increased competition.

To make things even worse for miners over the past 17 days - on March 9 (just days before the stock price plummeted on March 12), Bitcoin mining difficulty reached an all-time high. There is still more than two weeks before the mining industry can adjust itself.

According to data from the mining pool f2pool, the recent Bitcoin price collapse, coupled with unprecedented mining competition (because Bitcoin mining difficulty has reached an all-time high), assuming the average cost of electricity is US$0.05 per kilowatt hour, it is equivalent to talking about the past two years. More than 24 old-school Bitcoin mining machines are losing money every day this week.

The average total computing power generated by all mining rigs on the Bitcoin network has also dropped over the past two weeks, from 118 EH/s in early March to around 99 EH/s now.

Chris, co-founder and COO of Chinese mining pool PoolIn
Zhu said on March 12 that he expected Bitcoin’s hash rate to drop by 20% to 30% in the coming weeks, following the price collapse, based on several hash rate drops by major mining pools at the time.