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Difficulty of Bitcoin Mining and (1d) Mean Hashrate (5y)
Glassnode – Screenshot
Today, the Bitcoin network is set to see its largest ever negative difficulty adjustment, going from 19.9T to 14.4T. The retargeting will take place later today (50 blocks from the time of writing).
Statistics on Bitcoin Difficulty as of July 2nd, 2021
Bitco.io screenshot
The metric “difficulty” is used to quantify how difficult it is to mine a new block. Miners require more processing power on average to find the next block hash as the network difficulty increases. Miners become more or less profitable when Bitcoin’s price and difficulty fluctuate, and they turn on or off hardware accordingly, establishing a type of equilibrium.
Every 2016 blocks, Bitcoin’s difficulty is adjusted based on the time it took to mine the previous set of 2016 blocks. By aiming for a block mining time of 10 minutes, the 2016 blocks should take 2 weeks to mine; however, block mining times may become momentarily shorter or longer if hash power is added or removed from the network during this time.
Over the current difficulty phase, block mining times have progressively climbed, indicating a major difficulty adjustment is on the way:

Interval between Bitcoin Blocks (12w)
terminal.bytetree.com (screenshot)
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FOR YOU
Miners are turning down equipment and shifting operations elsewhere as a result of the recent departure of Chinese miners following a government crackdown on the industry. Kazakhstan, Miami, Texas, El Salvador, and other mining-friendly places throughout the world are quickly preparing for the flood of new equipment.

KONGYUXIANG, GARZE, SICHUAN, CHINA – AUGUST 12: Guo-hua, the bitcoin mining site manager for Haobtc, inspects the… [+] Bitcoin mining equipment within their Kongyuxiang, Sichuan, China, mine. (Photo courtesy of Getty Images/Paul Ratje/For The Washington Post)
Getty Images/The Washington Post
While there is a short-term drop in hashrate for the Bitcoin network, as others have noted out, the large-scale relocation and dispersion of mining equipment offers more decentralization and security in the long run.
Aside from the long-term consequences for mining decentralization, the difficulty modification should simply cut block delays, allowing transactions to confirm substantially faster, and will enhance miner profitability, putting even more pressure on those leaving China to deploy their gear./nRead More

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