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Upon achieving an unprecedented all-time high on July 11, 2023, soaring to a staggering 53.91 trillion, Bitcoin’s difficulty is poised to decline by an estimated range of 3.9% to 4.04% come July 26, 2023. Block generation periods have been lagging behind their typical ten-minute average of late, registering at an elongated 12 minutes per block on July 21, and almost 11 minutes per block on the subsequent day.
Bitcoin’s High Difficulty Level on the Verge of Reduction
The forthcoming recalibration of Bitcoin’s difficulty is slated to happen on or about July 26. Following a notable rise of 6.45% on July 11, it’s projected that there could be a downward adjustment ranging from 3.9% to 4.04%. Bitcoin’s block generation occurs roughly every ten minutes and every 2,016 blocks, a drop in the difficulty of mining takes place if the process of discovering those blocks extends beyond two weeks. Conversely, the level of difficulty increases if the mining of 2,016 blocks is completed in less than two weeks.
Block intervals on July 21 and 22 were longer than the usual ten minutes, lasting from 11 to more than 12 minutes. While the hashrate reached a high on July 8, the hashrate has been lower with an average of 371.1 exahash per second (EH/s) over the last 2,016 blocks. Over the past three days, Foundry USA commands 30.08% of the global hashrate with 111.75 EH/s which is followed by Antpool’s 86.92 EH/s or 23.39% of the total hashrate. F2pool, Binance Pool, and Viabtc follow the two mining pool leaders.
Currently, as of July 24, block times have shown signs of improvement, marginally dipping below the ten-minute average and at times, leveling off slightly above it at ten minutes and 24 seconds. On Monday, 8:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST), the backlog is teeming with between 265,000 to 280,000 transactions in a holding pattern, waiting for their turn to be confirmed.
Miners are still wrestling with the protracted issue of clearing the backlog that’s been bottlenecking the blockchain for months. In order to untangle the pile-up of unconfirmed transactions, it’s essential to clear 95 blocks. An impending difficulty reduction in a couple of days stands to ease the path for mining participants in their quest to discover these blocks.