Bitcoin difficulty rises to new ATH with biggest jump since May 2021

Just a few blocks ago at block height 758,016, Bitcoin mining difficulty adjusted up by +13.55% from 31.35 T (trillion) to 35.61 T after a massive hashrate increase during the last difficulty epoch caused average block time of only 8 mins 49 secs.

This is the new ATH difficulty and the biggest upward adjustment since May 2021 at block height 683,424 when difficulty increased by 21.53% and the biggest adjustment since July 2021 at block height 689,472 when difficulty dropped by 27.94% following the China mining ban and the great hashrate exodus. Interestingly, somewhere close to 20% hashrate is still estimated to emanate from China.

How does difficulty work?

In simple terms, Bitcoin block time is a Poisson process. Difficulty represents the estimated number of hashes required to mine a block. The difficulty algorithm sets the pace of 10 minute average block time. The calculation is deterministic with every node calculating independently and all come to the same difficulty target estimation without communication or trust.

Each 2016 blocks period is called a difficulty epoch. The current estimated number of hashes to mine a block for this difficulty epoch is 35,610,794,164,371 for the next 2016 blocks starting from block 758,016. The difficulty level for the next epoch will adjust at block height 760,032 according to average hashrate from this epoch to re-target a 10 minute average block time.