Bitcoin Network Preps for Another Difficulty Spike as Hashrate Remains Strong and Miners Profit Amid Price Surge

Bitcoin Difficulty Expected to Rise Following the Past Two Consecutive Increases

At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s difficulty is at an all-time high of 43.55 trillion, and the network’s hashrate remains above the 300 exahash per second (EH/s) range at 319.86 EH/s. Bitcoin has risen 26.2% over the last two weeks against the U.S. dollar, which has greatly helped bitcoin miners, and BTC’s spot value is now above the cost to mine it.

Bitcoin miners dealt with two consecutive difficulty increases over the last month, with the first jumping 9.95% higher on Feb. 24, 2023, and the second increasing by 1.16% on March 10. The rise hasn’t seemed to affect bitcoin miners, as block interval times (times between each block mined) are still less than the ten-minute average. Currently, block times range between nine minutes and 28 seconds and nine minutes and 31 seconds.

At present, the estimated difficulty change for Friday, March 24, is expected to be between 2.51% and 5.7% higher than the current 43.55 trillion. If miners maintain or even accelerate their pace, the difficulty after the next adjustment could potentially rise above the 50 trillion hashes mark. Current estimates suggest the target range will be between 44.64 trillion and 49.25 trillion.