Mining
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On March 21, the complexity of the Bitcoin network was at an all-time high of 43.55 trillion, while the network hashrate remained above the 300 exahesh per second (Eh/s) range at 319.86 Eh/s. Over the past two weeks, bitcoin has risen 26.2% against the US dollar, which has helped BTC miners a lot, since now the spot value of the cryptocurrency exceeds the cost of mining it.
Over the past month, bitcoin miners have experienced two consecutive increases in difficulty: the first brought a 9.95% increase on February 24, 2023, the second a 1.16% increase on March 10. The rise does not appear to have affected Bitcoin miners as the block interval is still less than ten minutes. Currently, block creation time varies from nine minutes 28 seconds to nine minutes 31 seconds.
The implied change in difficulty on Friday March 24 is expected to be 2.51% to 5.7% above the current $43.55 trillion. If miners maintain or even accelerate their pace, the difficulty after the next adjustment could potentially exceed the 50 trillion hash mark.
Three-day statistics on the distribution of bitcoin hashrate by mining pools (data from btc.com).
Mining distribution statistics show that Foundry USA is currently the leading BTC mining pool with 97.22 Eh/s or 30.31% of the global hashrate. Foundry is followed by Antpool at 61.03 Eh/s and F2pool at 46.13 Eh/s. As of March 21, 2023, the top five Bitcoin mining pools, including Foundry, Antpool, F2pool, Binance Pool, and Viabtc, manage 84.52% of the global hashrate.
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