Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Hits New Historic High

Key Points:

• On the 2nd of August 2024, Bitcoin mining difficulty reached a new all-time high, recording a difficulty adjustment of 90,666,502,495,566, taping the largest positive adjustment ever recorded.
• The increased competition and the surge in difficulty might mean higher operational costs for miners, which would subsequently affect Bitcoin’s supply and market price.

On August 2, 2024, Bitcoin mining difficulty reached an all-time high of 90,666,502,495,566 million. This has been the greatest increase ever seen against a three-month fall. It just goes on to prove the rising competition in the sector of Bitcoin mining.

Read more: Best Bitcoin Mining Hardwares In 2024 (Expert Reviewed)

Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Soars to All-Time High

According to Alex Thorn, the head of research at Galaxy, this ranks 24th for the largest since 2016 and 119th largest of all time. It also shows that Bitcoin is much more complex and its network has grown so much after this year’s halving event.

The Bitcoin mining difficulty is, in other words, a measure of the difficulty in mining a block of transactions in the Bitcoin blockchain. This measure is readjusted once every 2016 blocks, while an increased degree of difficulty reflects higher needed computational efforts, changing accordingly the costs and dynamics of mining.

Bitcoin Price Drops Amid Record Difficulty Surge

This definitely will increase the operational costs for miners and thereby affect the overall market price of Bitcoin. On the contrary, an increase in the level of difficulty signals a more competitive mining space and thus reaffirms the robust infrastructure that Bitcoin has.

On the other hand, rising Bitcoin mining costs may alter the dynamics of supply and, hence, the price of the cryptocurrency. At the time of writing, Bitcoin changed hands at $61,600, down 4.35% in the past 24 hours.