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While BTC’s Hashrate Remains High, It’s More Difficult Than Ever Before to Mine Bitcoin

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While BTC's Hashrate Remains High, It's More Difficult Than Ever Before to Mine Bitcoin

At the end of January 2021, Bitcoin’s network mining difficulty, a measure of how complicated it is to mine a block reward, is higher than it’s ever been during the crypto protocol’s lifetime. Currently, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty is a whopping 20.8 trillion but despite the handicap, bitcoin miners have continued to keep the network’s hashrate running hot.

Bitcoin Difficulty Touches 20.82 Trillion

Bitcoin (BTC) prices have been higher than ever before and despite the temporary dip on January 21 below the $30k handle, the crypto asset has managed to remain above that range. This has made it so a great number of ASIC mining machines are profiting at the current price per BTC including older generation mining rigs.

Nevertheless, the current Bitcoin (BTC) mining difficulty is the highest it’s ever been in the last 12 years of operation. The difficulty is essentially how hard it is for a miner to mine a BTC block or basically find a hash below a given target.

While BTC's Hashrate Remains High, It's More Difficult Than Ever Before to Mine Bitcoin

The higher the difficulty, the more complicated it is for all the mining participants trying to find bitcoin blocks on any given day. At the time of publication, public data shows the BTC chain’s difficulty is approximately 20,823,531,150,111 or 20.82T.

Small Difficulty Jump Expected in Less Than Two Weeks, Bitcoin Hashrate Runs Hot Above 150 Exahash

There’re around 22 mining pools dedicating SHA256 hashrate at the BTC chain and typically there were usually only around 18 most of the months last year. Presently, these pools have kept the BTC hashrate above the 150 exahash per second (eH/s) region.

While BTC's Hashrate Remains High, It's More Difficult Than Ever Before to Mine Bitcoin

During the last two months, BTC’s hashrate has held solid between 140 to 165 EH/s. At current speeds it seems the difficulty will only jump a hair higher at +0.11% to 20.85T in 12 days.

Right now the top five pools mining BTC today, include F2pool (23 EH/s), Poolin (19.2 EH/s), Binance Pool (17.1 EH/s), Btc.com (16.5 EH/s), and Antpool (12.4 EH/s). These top five mining pools command 61.45% of the entire SHA256 hashrate today, while 17 mining pools capture 38.55% of the remaining hashrate.

What do you think about the current mining difficulty touching a lifetime high? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Despite Bitcoin’s Price Highs, Onchain Data Shows BTC Miners Are Not Spending More Than Usual

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Despite Bitcoin's Price Highs, Onchain Data Shows BTC Miners Are Not Spending More Than Usual

The cryptocurrency economy has been higher in value than ever before as bitcoin has touched an all-time price high at $24,298 per unit. Regardless of the all-time price highs, the world’s bitcoin miners are not spending more bitcoin than usual according to onchain statistics. Bitcoin miner outflow has been higher during the bull run but also lower than the 2019 top.

Speculators assume that when the price of bitcoin (BTC) rises, bitcoin mining operations will sell more coins. However, while BTC has touched a new all-time high (ATH), miners are not selling more bitcoin than usual according to data from onchain charting sites like Cryptoquant and Glassnode. On December 22, the onchain researchers from Glassnode explained how miners are not spending more than usual during the ATH.

“Despite the recent rally, Bitcoin miners are not spending more BTC than usual,” Glassnode said on Tuesday. “The Miner Outflow Multiple, which shows when BTC miner outflow is high with respect to its historical average, is far from previous tops and even below the 2019 local top.”

Despite Bitcoin's Price Highs, Onchain Data Shows BTC Miners Are Not Spending More Than Usual

Since the halving and the bull run that followed a few months later, bitcoin miners have been profiting a great deal. Before the halving, it was estimated that miners need BTC prices to be around $12,500 to break even at revenues obtained before the halving.

The overall hashrate is very high at 139 exahash per second (EH/s) as 14 mining operations are point hashrate at the BTC chain. With prices above the $23k handle, bitcoin miners and even older generation mining rigs like the S9 are seeing significant profits.

At the time of publication, 18,579,969 BTC are in circulation today and so far that’s 88.48% of the 21 million supply cap. BTC’s inflation per annum has dropped considerably to 1.78% after holding a rate of above 3.6% before May’s halving.

On average $20,961,900 worth (at today’s exchange rates) of BTC is issued by miners every day at 144 blocks per day. Yesterday 147 BTC blocks were found and 2,037 blocks were found during the last 2 weeks at 6 blocks per hour.

While the BTC coinbase rewards have a two-week average of $146,046 per block the average aggregate number of fees per block is 0.81 BTC or $18,837. Glassnode’s onchain stats show that entities are holding onto coins longer, according to the “realized hodl ratio” during the last seven days.

In addition to data from Glassnode, miner outflow stats from Cryptoquant indicates that bitcoin miner selling has not increased a great deal with BTC prices so high. Cryptoquant tracks data from major BTC mining pools like Antpool, Poolin, Btc.com, F2pool, Viabtc, Slush, Dpool, Bytepool, and others alongside the smaller unknown mining pools as well.

What do you think about miners holding onto their newly minted bitcoins? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

The post Despite Bitcoin’s Price Highs, Onchain Data Shows BTC Miners Are Not Spending More Than Usual appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Bitcoin Network’s Mining Difficulty Sees Largest Epoch Drop Since 2011

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Bitcoin Network's Mining Difficulty Sees Largest Epoch Drop Since 2011

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty saw the second-largest drop in history on Tuesday, as the difficulty dropped to 16.78 trillion, losing a touch over 16% since last week’s all-time difficulty high. The last time bitcoin’s mining difficulty dropped so low was in October 2011, when it lost around 18%. Since the large difficulty drop took place, the overall SHA256 hashrate increased a great deal after losing 40% during the last week of October.

The Bitcoin (BTC) network saw a significant mining difficulty drop on Tuesday when it slid -16.05% to 16.78t. News.Bitcoin.com reported last week on how the network’s SHA256 hashrate plunged around 40% to roughly 90 exahash per second.

Bitcoin Network's Mining Difficulty Sees Largest Epoch Drop Since 2011

Following Tuesday’s difficulty drop, BTC’s hashrate has increased a great deal, spiking to 114 EH/s on November 3, after touching 97 EH/s during the earliest hours on Tuesday morning. BTC’s hashrate is hovering just above the 100 EH/s handle at 107 EH/s at the time of publication.

Mining difficulty essentially is the relative measurement of the amount of resources needed to find bitcoin blocks on a given day. It gives people an idea of how difficult it is to mine a new block. Bitcoin’s difficulty changes using 2,016 block epochs or two-week intervals.

Bitcoin Network's Mining Difficulty Sees Largest Epoch Drop Since 2011

When the hashrate is extremely high, the difficulty will grow more difficult during the change and if the total estimated hashrate has drops it becomes easier to mine bitcoin. With the hashrate at current speeds today, estimates show another -16% drop on the horizon.

Data from Btc.com on Tuesday indicates the next change is more than 14 days away and estimates show it may drop down to 14.05t, losing -16.3% if it comes to fruition. Today, on November 3, there are 16 mining operations dedicating hashrate to the Bitcoin (BTC) network.

F2pool leads the pack of pools with roughly 18.7% of the network with over 20 EH/s under the hood. This is followed by operations like Poolin (15.5 EH/s), Btc.com (12.4 EH/s). Huobi (12.4 EH/s), and Antpool (11.7 EH/s). With 107 EH/s dedicated to the BTC chain, the five aforementioned pools combined capture 67.28% of the overall hashrate.

At press time, the mempool clog has dropped a hair after the backlog saw over 100k unconfirmed transactions during the course of last week and into the weekend. However, data shows the mempool still has around 73k unconfirmed transactions on Tuesday.

What do you think about Bitcoin’s recent difficulty drop? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

The post Bitcoin Network’s Mining Difficulty Sees Largest Epoch Drop Since 2011 appeared first on Bitcoin News.

Bitcoin Mining Rigs Struggle for Profits, Despite BTC’s Hashrate Reaching an All-Time High

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Bitcoin Mining Rigs Struggle for Profits, Despite BTC's Hashrate Reaching an All-Time High

Bitcoin’s hashrate climbed to an all-time high (ATH) this week touching 166 exahash per second (EH/s) on October 14. Meanwhile, despite the recent price rise and hashrate ATH on Wednesday, only a small group of next-generation mining rigs are profiting at current bitcoin exchange rates.

The price of bitcoin (BTC) is hovering just above the $11K region and during the last few days, the network’s hashrate has touched a new ATH. At the time of writing, BTC’s hashrate is fluctuating between 130 to 140 exahash per second (EH/s), and on Wednesday evening (ET) the metric surpassed 166 EH/s.

Interestingly, the rise has continued despite the fact that BTC’s network difficulty has also reached an ATH at 19.69T. This means it is harder than ever before to find a block mining the BTC network, but this hasn’t phased the overall hashrate. The next BTC difficulty change is scheduled to happen in just a hair over two days’ time.

Bitcoin Mining Rigs Struggle for Profits, Despite BTC's Hashrate Reaching an All-Time High

On Thursday, October 15, 2020, there are 18 known mining pools hashing away at the chain and a single unknown mining entity in the group as well. The top five pools mining on Thursday afternoon includes Btc.com (23.9 EH/s), F2pool (20.6 EH/s), Poolin (18.7 EH/s), Antpool (15.9 EH/s), and Huobi (11.3 EH/s).

While looking at the real-time mining hardware aggregator at asicvalue.com, with the filter set to $0.06 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) and SHA256 miners only, the web portal shows only 13 rigs are profiting today by over $2 per day.

Bitcoin Mining Rigs Struggle for Profits, Despite BTC's Hashrate Reaching an All-Time High
Statistics from asicvalue.com show 13 mining rigs profit at over $2 per day and 33 mining rigs profit below the $2 range if the mining operators are paying $0.06 per kWh.

There are 30 SHA256 mining rigs that are profiting at $0.11 to $1.89 per day at $0.06 per kWh. If the electrical costs are doubled at $0.12 per kWh then only two machines out of the 43 mining rigs profiting at $0.06 per kWh will profit.

Bitcoin Mining Rigs Struggle for Profits, Despite BTC's Hashrate Reaching an All-Time High
At $0.12 per kWh, asicvalue.com indicates that only two mining rigs are profiting at today’s exchange rates on October 15, 2020.

The two top machines include Bitmain’s Antminer S19 Pro (110 TH/s) and the Microbt Whatsminer M30S++ (112 TH/s). The Whatsminer M30S+ follows, alongside the Antminer S19, Whatsminer M30S, Antminer T19, and the AvalonMiner 1166 Pro respectively.

A number of other cryptocurrency algorithms are showing higher profits than the SHA256 consensus algorithm. At the time of publication, the algorithms Equihash, Ethash, Tensority, and Eaglestrong show larger profits for miners mining these types of coins. Currently, miners who mine SHA256 coins (BTC, BCH, BSV) need around $0.06 per kWh to gather some decent profits above $2 per day.

Further, it would be better for BTC miners if the price was $1,100 higher than it is today so miners can recoup from the May block reward halving. In February, the blockchain analytics provider Tradeblock estimated a post-halving mining cost of around $12,500 per BTC.

Currently, the average coinbase reward value during the last 24-hours is around $71,390 per block with around $6,189 (0.54 BTC) in transaction fees. With BTC’s hashrate rising to new levels, the expected difficulty adjustment on October 17th will be increased a touch more than today.

What do you think about BTC’s hashrate touching all-time highs and the current mining rig profitability? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

The post Bitcoin Mining Rigs Struggle for Profits, Despite BTC’s Hashrate Reaching an All-Time High appeared first on Bitcoin News.

BCH Hash Watch: Majority of Miners Signal BCHN, Coinex Exchange Announces Futures

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BCH Hash Watch: Majority of Miners Signal BCHN, Coinex Exchange Announces Futures

Bitcoin Cash proponents have recently noticed that the last 612 blocks or more than 61% of the last 1,000 blocks have been mined using BCHN, according to Coin Dance statistics. Moreover, data also shows that 82% of Bitcoin Cash hashpower is signaling BCHN, as the prominent miners Btc.com and Antpool have started signaling.

BCH fans are patiently waiting as there’s 53 days left until the November 15th Bitcoin Cash upgrade. News.Bitcoin.com reported on September 1, on how there’s a high chance the BCH blockchain will bifurcate into two networks.

At that time, our newsdesk detailed how prominent members of the BCH community bid the Bitcoin ABC developers farewell, and a number of mining operations began signaling the node BCHN.

BCH Hash Watch: Majority of Miners Signal BCHN, Coinex Exchange Announces Futures
61.19% of the last 1,000 blocks are mined using the BCHN full node software, according to data stemming from Coin Dance.

Today, Coin Dance statistics show 612 out of the last 1,000 blocks have been mined using the BCHN full node software. Toward the end of September, two new pools joined the fray of BCHN signalers, as Btc.com and Antpool started signaling BCHN in their coinbase parameters.

This means currently 82% of the entire BCH hashrate has been signaling BCHN. Pools included in this group include Binance, Antpool, Btc.com, Btc.top, Bitcoin.com, Huobi, Okex, MY7A, easy2mine, and Bejn.

BCH Hash Watch: Majority of Miners Signal BCHN, Coinex Exchange Announces Futures

During the last 12 hours, around 2.6 exahash per second (EH/s) of hashrate has been directed at the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) chain. Additionally, the trading platform Coinex revealed contingency plans for the upcoming upgrade, as the announcement mentions the possibility of a network split.

Coinex also announced the introduction of futures slated to drop on September 24. Bitcoin Cash supporters will also be waiting for other exchanges to reveal contingency plans as well going forward.

The futures listed on the crypto trading platform Coinflex show ABC versus BCH futures are still 10-to-1 in favor of BCH. While BCHN blocks crossed the 60% range, BCH supporters on the Reddit forum r/btc discussed the changes. Many expect the number of BCHN-mined blocks to increase during the next few weeks.

One Redditor noted that since Antpool just recently joined with 20% of the hashrate, the “[seven] day average should reach ~75% in [five or six] days time.”

What do you think about the hashpower signaling BCHN and the recent futures announcement from Coinex? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

The post BCH Hash Watch: Majority of Miners Signal BCHN, Coinex Exchange Announces Futures appeared first on Bitcoin News.