Bitcoin (BTC) Difficulty Drops Another 7%

[Ozark]

The network just became easier to mine in the fifth consecutive downward adjustment.

Bitcoin (BTC) will be easier to acquire for miners, as the network had another downward difficulty adjustment for the latest recalculation period. This means that the currently lowered hashrate, which stabilized around 43 EH/s, would ensure a higher probability of finding a block.

The current mining levels show a tentative recovery, up from lows around 33 EH/s, as the exodus of miners is stemmed for now. With BTC prices touching the $4,000 level, mining may continue to be viable, especially with the lowered difficulty.

However, a low difficulty may be beneficial only for a short while - if many miners return to the network for the higher potential reward, the difficulty would start to inch up.

Any signs of a Bitcoin recovery are eagerly sought, as the current rally took BTC briefly above $4,100. The BTC market price later retreated to $4,042.41 and briefly dipped under $4,000. But for now, a longer and stronger rally is seen as rather improbable.

Bitcoin’s difficulty started to go downward from October, just around the time rapid sell-offs took BTC prices below $6,000. That level was seen as ensuring profitable mining for most operations. As the price crashed below $5,000 and under $4,000, there was a marked withdrawal of miners, which signified that market prices defined their behavior.

The Bitcoin network still manages to work through more than 836,000 transactions in 24 hours, based on Blocktivity data, with a record of 896,114 transactions in a day. Transactions are somewhat independent of the mining level, but the network’s usage is seen as an indicator of the coin’s success. To compare, Litecoin (LTC) has received criticism for a significant decline in on-chain transactions. Previously, LTC was used to move funds between exchanges, but now stablecoins are used to move funds, and LTC has somewhat lagged.

Bitcoin mining is also now using significantly less energy - since November, the power usage estimated has fallen from 73 TWh to 42 TWh. Thus, Bitcoin’s network uses as much energy as New Zealand or Peru.

SOURCE