In today's digital currency field, Bitcoin has always been the focus of much attention. And one of the key concepts, Bitcoin difficulty adjustment, has always attracted much attention. What does Bitcoin difficulty adjustment mean? How does it affect the development and trading of Bitcoin? Let's explore it in depth.

Bitcoin difficulty adjustment, as the name suggests, refers to the Bitcoin network adjusting the difficulty of mining according to certain rules and algorithms. This process is to ensure the security and stability of the Bitcoin network. With the development of Bitcoin, the difficulty adjustment mechanism is also constantly evolving and improving.

Bitcoin difficulty adjustment is achieved by adjusting the target value of mining. The target value of mining is a hexadecimal number, and miners need to find a hash value smaller than this target value to complete a mining. The purpose of difficulty adjustment is to keep the Bitcoin network generating a block approximately every 10 minutes, ensuring the issuance speed and stability of Bitcoin.

As the price of Bitcoin fluctuates and the number of miners changes, the difficulty of Bitcoin is constantly adjusted. When the number of miners increases and the mining speed increases, the system will automatically adjust the difficulty to make mining more difficult; vice versa. This mechanism effectively maintains the stable operation of the Bitcoin network.

The mechanism of Bitcoin difficulty adjustment is controlled by a key parameter in the Bitcoin protocol. This parameter will automatically adjust according to the length of time it took to mine a block in the previous cycle to ensure that the time to mine a block in the next cycle is close to 10 minutes. This design ensures the stability and security of Bitcoin.

In addition to keeping the issuance speed stable, Bitcoin difficulty adjustment also has a direct impact on miners. The increase in difficulty adjustment means that mining becomes more difficult, and miners need to invest more computing power and resources to get the same amount of Bitcoin rewards. This mechanism ensures the scarcity and value of Bitcoin.

In the history of Bitcoin, there have been some important events in difficulty adjustment. For example, after the Bitcoin fork in 2017, the difficulty adjustment algorithm has undergone some changes, resulting in some fluctuations in miners' income and computing power. These events all affect the operation of the Bitcoin network and the income of miners.

In general, Bitcoin difficulty adjustment is a vital mechanism in the Bitcoin network. It ensures the stability and security of Bitcoin, and also affects the income and computing power distribution of miners. With the continuous development of Bitcoin, the difficulty adjustment mechanism is also constantly evolving and improving to adapt to the changing market environment and mining needs. There are profound technical principles and economic logic behind Bitcoin difficulty adjustment, and it will continue to play an important role in the development of Bitcoin.

In the future, as Bitcoin becomes more popular and its application expands, Bitcoin difficulty adjustment will continue to play an important role. We look forward to seeing the Bitcoin network continue to innovate and evolve on the basis of difficulty adjustment, injecting new vitality and momentum into the future development of the digital currency world. Bitcoin difficulty adjustment is not only a technical issue, but also an important milestone on the road of Bitcoin development. Let us look forward to the future of Bitcoin and contribute to the prosperity and development of digital currency.

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.

When it comes to Bitcoin, I believe many investors know something about it. After all, Bitcoin is now the most popular digital currency. At present, there are two ways to obtain Bitcoin, mining and direct purchase from exchanges. The Bitcoin difficulty adjustment mentioned in this article is closely related to mining. It can even be said that Bitcoin difficulty adjustment will have a direct impact on mining. However, most investors don’t know much about Bitcoin difficulty adjustment. So, what does Bitcoin difficulty adjustment mean? Below, the editor of the currency circle will give you a popular explanation of what Bitcoin difficulty adjustment means?

 What does Bitcoin difficulty adjustment mean?

Bitcoin mining difficulty (Difficulty) is a measure of the difficulty of mining. The greater the difficulty of mining, the more difficult it is to mine a block. The target value (Target) is inversely proportional to the difficulty of mining. The higher the difficulty, the smaller the target value. The difficulty target is obtained by converting the target value, which is a field of only
4 bytes (for ease of understanding, this article treats the difficulty target as the target value). The Bitcoin system controls the average time required to mine a block by adjusting the difficulty target in the block header.

The target value is a string of 256 bits in length. In other words, the target value has about 2^256 possible values. Adjusting the difficulty target is to adjust the proportion of the target value in the entire output space.

For example: mining is like shooting, and all the bullets fired will fall on a large target. The difficulty target is to circle a range on this large target. The smaller the range, the higher the difficulty of being shot. Adjusting the difficulty target is to adjust the proportion of this circle on the entire target.

As the mining computing power increases, the number of shots per unit time increases, and the time required for the target range to be shot is shorter. Conversely, as the mining computing power decreases, the time required for the target range to be hit is longer. The average block time pursued by the Bitcoin system is
10 minutes, so it is necessary to adjust the difficulty target to achieve this.

 Bitcoin difficulty adjustment algorithm:

The average block time of Bitcoin is 10 minutes, and this 10 minutes is adjusted by the "Mining difficulty adjust algorithm".

The Bitcoin blockchain system does not know how many miners (computing power) are currently mining. It can only infer how many miners are mining by the speed of mining blocks. If the block is produced faster than expected (the average block time is less than 10 minutes for a period of time), it means that there is more computing power, and the mining difficulty should be increased to reduce the miners' block production speed.

With the development of Bitcoin, a large number of competing coins that fork the Bitcoin code have also emerged. The mining income of different coins varies. Miners will not mine a fixed coin, but will choose the highest income among all coins, constantly switch mining (jump mining), and even appear mining pools that specialize in hopping mining as a profit method - machine gun pools. The Litecoin Mining Pool is a famous machine gun pool developed at that time.

These coins directly inherited Bitcoin's "mining difficulty adjustment algorithm" at the beginning. Then, the problem came out: when Satoshi Nakamoto wrote the "mining difficulty adjustment algorithm", he did not consider the situation where multiple coins coexist in the same algorithm, and then miners jump between different coins. The Bitcoin difficulty adjustment cycle is once every 2016 blocks (about 14 days), which is too long.

According to the principle of "mining the most profitable coins", miners continue to pour into mining in low-difficulty cycles and withdraw from mining in high-difficulty cycles, forming a "computing power flash". This causes the difficulty adjustment algorithm to misjudge the computing power, and further adjust the mining difficulty to a super low / super high position, until a certain high-difficulty cycle is too much loss, even the most sluggish miners withdraw from mining, and the coin dies.

The above is the relevant content about what Bitcoin difficulty adjustment means. In fact, the difficulty of Bitcoin mining is also a weather vane. When the difficulty is low or continues to decline, it means that the computing power of the entire network is declining and the entire mining industry is cooling down; when the mining difficulty is high or continues to rise, it means that more mining machines are put into operation, the market is full of confidence, and the entire mining industry is recovering. Therefore, for miners who want to enter the mining market, since the three factors of mining difficulty, total network computing power, and currency price are dynamically changing, when deciding the time to enter the market, you may wish to pay attention to the parameter of mining income.