The difficulty of mining bitcoin has reached a new record. As a result of the next recalculation, carried out on March 11, it updated its historical maximum, having increased by 1.16%, to 43.55 T, according to BTC.com.
The previous record was set on February 25, when the difficulty reached 43.05 T. At that time, the next increase to 43.08 T (+0.06%) was predicted, but the recalculation exceeded expectations.
Bitcoin mining difficulty changes every 2016 blocks, or roughly every two weeks. It rises following the growth of computing power. This is necessary so that the average block time is about 10 minutes. The next change in mining difficulty will occur around March 24, which should make bitcoin mining even more difficult: the expected figure is 45.42 T (+4.29%).
The average time to receive a block is now 9 minutes 53 seconds. The average bitcoin hash rate (total computing power of equipment that produces cryptocurrency) at the current difficulty is expected to be at the level of 311.69 EH / s, which also became the maximum value. The previous high of the average hashrate was 308.09 EH/s on February 25th.
The increase in mining difficulty and the hashrate of the bitcoin network indicate that more and more miners are connected to the production of the first cryptocurrency. This happens despite the fact that before the difficulty recalculation date on March 11, the asset price fell below $20,000, having updated the minimum since January 14.