On July 5, the difficulty mining Bitcoin declined by more than 5% to a quarterly low of 79.50 terahashes (79.5T). This represented the biggest drop since March, when the challenge dropped momentarily below 80T.
Between March and May, difficulty peaked at 88.10T before gradually declining to where it stands right now as of the day this article was written.
A measurement of hashrate, bitcoin mining difficulty essentially gauges the number of guesses a mining machine should be expected to produce before it solves the cryptographic puzzle required to unlock one of the remaining bitcoins.
Every 2,016 blocks, or two weeks, hashrates are refreshed. Usually, with a few exceptions, hashrates have increased month over month over the existence of Bitcoin.
For instance, hashrates measured roughly 1.1 gigahashes back in 2014. This was low enough that most desktop PCs could mine Bitcoin (the more powerful and energy-efficient a rig needs to be profitable). As adoption started to take place towards the end of 2017, hashrates first hit the terahash level. Additionally, as of July 6, 2024, they remain at 79.5T until the next difficulty upgrade.
Mining pool F2 Pool projects that an ASIC rig with a watts per terahash efficiency rate of 26 or better (lower) would be lucrative under the current difficulty measure of 79.5T as long as Bitcoin’s price stays above the $54,000 level.
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