Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Set for 1% Increase as Hashrate Rebounds

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty is poised to increase by around 0.9% on Thursday as the network’s seven-day moving average hashrate rebounds to over 600 EH/s.

Network data shows that bitcoin’s average block production interval between the latest block as of writing (844,577) and the previous difficulty adjustment block (842,688) on May 9 was 9.91 minutes, or about 1% faster than the intended 10-minute interval.

The expected upward adjustment comes as bitcoin’s network hashrate experienced a rebound since Monday as the three-day moving average jumped above 620 EH/s again.

In fact, network data shows the average block production in the 10 days since the May 9 adjustment was slightly longer than 10 minutes, suggesting that the hashrate remained steady at around 595 EH/s after the previous adjustment and that the difficulty was initially expected to decline marginally.

However, the hashing power began rising on Monday as the average block production over the past three days was accelerated to 9.55 minutes. Bitcoin’s price jumped above $70,000 on Monday amid the market news on the SEC making progress on reviewing spot ETFs for ETH.

Bitcoin’s market price movement elevated the hashprice to over $55/PH/s, which is up 22% since the recent lows of $45/PH/s following the halving.