Bitcoin mining difficulty was further boosted on 20th November by 0.51% when blocks were at the height of 764,064.
Although the increase was little yet it allowed the network to see its difficulty level reaching its forever best so far.
Since 20th November though Bitcoin’s hashrate is approximately 249.1 exahash per second (EH/s).
Longer Block Time Consequences
The present block time Bitcoin average range of 10.2 to 11.06 minutes is currently lower than its normal range. However, intervals between the blocks have gapped significantly since the difficulty was last modified on 20th November.
Prior to 20th November, and from 29th September onwards, the block time average was apparently under 10 minutes time.
Considering the longer present block time, it seems that the mining of 2,016 BTC blocks, ahead of the upcoming ‘retarget’, would be slowed down by 14 days.
This means that there is a huge possibility that a 10% drop would take place in the ‘retarget’ by 5th December 2022.
Data Indicating Difficulty Drop
Data from Btc.com also points out that there is a likelihood of a 6.13% drop very soon.
In case the expected happens, then Bitcoin’s difficulty would break its earlier difficult record set up on 21st July 2022. At that time, the miners had to face a difficulty level of roughly -5.01%.
Presently, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty is already at its highest ever while BTC is consistently witnessing value declines. Since 10th November 2021, BTCs value had dropped by an average of 76% from the price range of $69K.
Data from macromicro.me and braiins.com suggest the present cost spent on producing Bitcoin is more than BTCs present market value.
Production Cost Exceeds Market Value
Data showed that $18,360 is spent on producing Bitcoin while the present market value of Bitcoin is around $16,250 i.e. roughly $2,000 more.
On the other hand, Glassnode’s analysis suggests that Bitcoin miners are forced to take out funds from their treasuries and spent on mining.
Glassnode posted a tweet outlining the difficulty and immense pressure faced by the Bitcoin mining industry.
Analysis of Glassnode
Analysts of Glassnode noted that Bitcoin miners are forced to utilize 135% of the minted coins. This means that miners have been using their strong treasuries for funding their mining activities.
Furthermore, it has been disclosed by regularized miners that for boosting reserves and clearing down debts, they have been disposing off mined BTCs.
The world’s biggest Bitcoin miner namely Foundry USA has been mining Bitcoin with a hashrate power of 60.66 EH/s.
In the past three days, Foundry USA had been able to mint only 98 BTC blocks out of total of 483 blocks. The rest of the blocks i.e. 385 were shared between the entire miners’ lot.