Bitcoin Difficulty Reduction Incoming? Miners Brace for a Major Shift on Aug. 14

Following the latest difficulty change 11 days ago when the metric increased by 10.5%, Bitcoin’s difficulty is estimated to shift downward between 4% to 5.3% on Aug. 14.

Bitcoin’s All-Time High Difficulty Faces Estimated Reduction

Bitcoin miners may get some relief in three days when the difficulty retarget shifts following the largest difficulty rise so far this year. Around 11 days ago at block height 854,784, Bitcoin’s difficulty jumped 10.5% higher after block intervals were completed faster than the ten-minute average during the past 2,016 blocks. The difficulty rose to an all-time high that day on July 31 with the metric at 90.67 trillion today.

Block times, however, during this cycle have been slower and right now the average is around 10 minutes 32 seconds. This in turn is resulting in an estimated difficulty decrease on Aug. 14 as current metrics from two distinct sources show a reduction between 4% to 5.3%. However, this estimate could change over the next 480 blocks yet to be mined. If it’s around 5.3%, it will erase at least half of what was added during the last retarget.

The network’s hashprice, or the expected value of 1 petahash per second (PH/s) of hashpower, is coasting along at $42.43 which is extremely low compared to pre-halving revenue. A difficulty reduction will help miners as it will be easier to discover blocks in this low revenue environment. At press time on Sunday, Aug. 11, 2024, the network’s total hashrate is coasting along at 618.47 exahash per second (EH/s).