Powerful new hardware joins mining party thereby making Bitcoin mining more difficult

Bitcoin mining more

New mining hardware is pushing up the Bitcoin mining, thereby requiring more computational power than ever before.

Mining difficulty

This mining difficulty is the second largest increase in difficulty since the turn of the year, and the fifth time mining difficulty has increased in the last six recalibration periods.

Bitcoin mining difficulty

Increasing Bitcoin mining difficulty might sound like an hindrance, but it plays an important role in controlling the network, making sure the blocks are at a stable rate and the network more flexible to attack.

Mining difficulty automatically recalibrates, roughly every two weeks, that’s after every 2016 blocks that has been processed. However, the consistency with which mining difficulty has increased this year is a reflection of the current eagerness of competition among miners.

Because of the increase in the price of Bitcoin in recent months, there’s a new enthusiasm for mining, which is now more productive than ever.

As mining operations scale up, in a bid to capitalize on the increase in the value of Bitcoin, the mining difficulty rises to a degree.

According to Whit Gibbs, CEO at mining firm Compass, the large number of new Application-Scientific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) machines coming online as supply chain issues are resolved, can be linked to the significant rise in mining difficulty.

“Today’s moderately large difficulty increase is not surprising, and I expect it’s only a taste of what will come later in this year and into 2022, as deployed machine shipments start arriving and being deployed,”

“The pending flood of hashrate about to enter the market will only continue pushing Bitcoin’s mining difficulty higher, which should track with Bitcoin’s price.” – he said.

While the further growth in the price of Bitcoin will make so many persons happy, an increase in mining difficulty will do nothing to ease concerns about the environmental impact of Bitcoin mining. However, More energy will be needed into the network, which already uses up more power than the country of Sweden. This is so because more computational power is required to compete for cryptocurrency rewards.

Edited by: Celine