Bitcoin mining difficulty drops 4.6% as hashrate continues to rise

Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) miners received a brief reprieve as the network’s mining difficulty dropped by 4.6% at block height 862,848.

This adjustment means that for the next two weeks, the process of discovering new Bitcoin blocks will be 4.6% easier than it was during the previous 2,016 blocks, which had the highest recorded difficulty level.

Before this change, Bitcoin's difficulty stood at 92.67 trillion between block heights 860,832 and 862,848.

The hashprice, or the estimated daily earnings per petahash per second (PH/s) of SHA256 hashpower, was $41.12 per PH/s during that period.

Following the adjustment, the hashprice increased by 11.35% to $45.79 per PH/s as Bitcoin hovered near the $64,000 mark.

The latest difficulty stands at 88.40 trillion, making Bitcoin mining somewhat easier for miners.

Miners must now make an average of 88.40 trillion guesses to find the correct number and earn the block reward.

The higher the difficulty, the more time-consuming the mining process becomes.

However, with this difficulty drop, miners will have an easier time finding new blocks.

Currently, the network's hashrate is around 638.82 exahash per second (EH/s).

On September 8, the hashrate reached a record 693 EH/s before dropping by 72 EH/s on September 16.

Since then, approximately 17.82 EH/s has been added back to the network's computational power.

With the reduced difficulty and rising price of Bitcoin—up 4.6% against the U.S. dollar this week—the network's hashrate could continue to grow.

At the time of reporting, the Bitcoin price was $63,378.04.