Recently the network witnessed the biggest increase in Bitcoin mining difficulty in more than two years. And it happened on Tuesday afternoon, when the network adjusted its difficulty level, a measure of how difficult it is for miners to compete for block rewards on the blockchain, to 15.78 trillion.
The 14.95% increase is the largest difficulty jump since January 2018, which saw an even bigger increase on the back of the 2017 crypto market bull run, according to data compiled by BTC.com . As a result, miners contributing hashing power to the network now face the fourth most difficult two-week mining period in Bitcoin's history.
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The latest increase comes after two consecutive decreases in Bitcoin mining difficulty, following the network's fourth halving on May 11, 2020, which reduced block rewards from 12.5 bitcoin per block to the current 6.25 bitcoin.
The reduction in block rewards initially forced some miners with inefficient hardware or more expensive electricity resources to halt operations. That led to a decline in the total Bitcoin hashrate and difficulty until earlier this month. The difficulty drops on May 20 and June 4, and the sudden reduction in competition meant that those miners able to continue operating could get a bigger slice of the pie.
However, the lower mining difficulty also meant that some who had shut down older mining equipment immediately after the halving could turn a profit once more in the last two weeks. Meanwhile, the major miner manufacturers in China have been delivering new and top-of-the-line equipment since May. These factors have raised the 14-day average hash rate in Bitcoin from 98 million terahashes per second (TH / s) earlier this month to now around 113 EH / s.
