Bitcoin’s Hash-rate Continues To Climb Despite Low Price

It’s been six days since Bitcoin’s last difficulty retarget. One which saw the largest rise this year when the metric jumped 13.55% higher. This was higher than the difficulty setting codified 2,016 blocks before block 758,016.

Bitcoin’s Difficulty

However, despite the difficulty increase and bitcoin’s (BTC) U.S. dollar value. A difficulty which saw bitcoin sliding to $18,183 on October 13, the network’s computational power has remained red-hot. This was the case as another all-time high record (ATH) was recorded on October 11.

On that day, Bitcoin’s hashrate reached 325.11 EH/s at block height 758,138. This is a 1.23% increase since the hashrate ATH recorded on October 5, at block height 757,214. At the time of writing, according to statistics from coinwarz.com, BTC’s total hashrate is just above the 289 EH/s zone.

The up-tempo hashrate has made it so block times are considerably faster than the ten-minute average. Data shows that the current BTC block generation time is around 8.22 minutes. However,  if the speedy block generation time continues, another pronounced difficulty rise in the cards.

Top 3 Bitcoin Mining Pools Command 50 EH/s Each

Even after the 13.55% difficulty rise, estimates indicate that on October-23, the difficulty is expected to increase by 3.59% to 5.5%. Meanwhile, over the last three days, 470 blocks were mined and the mining pool Foundry USA captured 101 blocks. This was the figure captured out of the total mined in 72 hours.

Foundry commands 21.49% of the global hashrate or 57.08 EH/s.

In fact, the top three mining pools have more than 50 EH/s of hashrate per pool. This means three-quarters of the chain’s computational power is backed by Foundry, Antpool, and F2pool. 

Consequently, there’s currently 12 known bitcoin mining pools today dedicating SHA256 hashpower toward the Bitcoin blockchain.  And as a result, 2.13% or 5.6-EH/s is controlled by unknown hashrate otherwise known as stealth miners.

Profits are still super tight for miners, and bitcoin mining profits are at all-time lows at under $70 (PH/s). However, with electrical costs at 0.05 nominal U.S. dollars per kilowatt hour, a Bitmain Antminer S19 XP with 140 terahash per second (TH/s), gets a much smaller profit today at $1.43 per day in BTC profits.

Cryptocurrency Prices Today

Cryptocurrency prices rebounded Thursday after sliding to new October lows following the release of a key U.S. inflation reading that came in hotter than expected.

The price of bitcoin was last higher by 1.3% at $19,388.89 and ether lost 0.7% to trade at $1,289.20, according to Coin Metrics. Earlier in the day they fell as low as $18,201.00 and $1,192.80, respectively.

Bitcoin dropped below $19,000 early on Thursday as investors anxiously awaited the latest read on the consumer price index. It fell more sharply after the report came in, showing a slightly larger-than-expected increase in inflation. An increase happening despite the aggressive rate hikes the Federal Reserve has brought into play to combat rising prices.

Cryptocurrencies have been trading mostly sideways since the end of August, with bitcoin hovering within $19,000. That’s been a key level to watch for analysts, who say a break below it could lead to new lows below those hit in June. Lows that saw bitcoin falling below $17,800 and ether under $900.