Hitting an all-time high on July 11, 2023, reaching a staggering 53.91 trillion, Bitcoin’s difficulty is about to decline to an estimated range of 3.9% to 4.04% on July 26, 2023.
The high level of difficulty of Bitcoin on the verge of halving
The next Bitcoin difficulty recalibration is scheduled for July 26. After a notable increase of 6.45% on July 11, it is projected that there could be a downward adjustment ranging between 3.9% and 4.04%. The generation of Bitcoin blocks occurs approximately every ten minutes and every 2016 blocks, a drop in mining difficulty occurs if the discovery process of these blocks extends for more than two weeks. On the other hand, the difficulty level increases if the mining of the 2016 blocks is completed in less than two weeks.
The lockdown breaks on July 21 and 22 were longer than the usual ten minutes, lasting between 11 and more than 12 minutes. While the hashrate peaked on July 8, it has been lower with an average of 371.1 exhash per second (EH/s) in the last few blocks of 2016. Over the last three days, Foundry USA controlled 30.08% of the global hashrate with 111.75 EH/s, followed by Antpool with 86.92 EH/s or 23.39% of the total hashrate. F2pool, Binance Pool and Viabtc follow the two mining pool leaders.
Currently, as of July 24, block times have shown signs of improvement, falling marginally below the ten minute average, and sometimes leveling off slightly above ten minutes and 24 seconds. Monday at 8:00 a.m. At m. Eastern Standard Time (EST), the order book is filled with 265,000 to 280,000 transactions in a holding pattern, waiting for their turn to be confirmed.
Miners are still struggling with the problem of clearing the backlog that has been bogging down the blockchain for months. To untangle the heap of unconfirmed transactions, 95 blocks need to be removed. An imminent difficulty reduction in a few days should pave the way for mining participants in their quest to discover these blocks.