The drop in mining difficulty should spell relief for the largest mining firms.
Bitcoin mining difficulty dropped by more than 5% on July 5 to a quarterly low of 79.50 terahashes per second (TH/s). This marked the largest reduction since March when it briefly dipped below 80 TH/s.
Difficulty spiked between March and May, reaching an all-time high of 88.10 TH/s before slowly settling to where it currently stands at the time of publication.
Mining difficulty
Bitcoin mining difficulty is measured in hashrate, which is the number of guesses a mining machine should be expected to make before it solves the cryptographic puzzle necessary to unlock one of the remaining Bitcoin
$62,934
Hashrates are updated every 2,016 blocks, which takes approximately two weeks. With few exceptions, during Bitcoin’s lifetime, hashrate has typically grown month-to-month.
Back in 2014, for example, the hashrate measured about 1.1 gigahashes per second. This was low enough that most desktop PCs could mine Bitcoin (the higher the hashrate, the more powerful and energy efficient a mining rig needs to be to be profitable).
Toward the end of 2017, as adoption began picking up, the hashrate reached the terahash mark for the first time. And as of July 6, 2024, it remains at 79.5 TH/s until the next difficulty update.
Under the current difficulty measure of 79.5 TH/s, mining pool F2Pool estimates that an ASIC rig with a watts per terahash efficiency rate of 26 or better (lower) would be profitable as long as Bitcoin’s price doesn’t dip below the $54,000 threshold.
“With a $BTC price of $54k, ASICs with Unit Power of 26 W/T or less can make a profit. We estimate this at $0.07 per kWh.”
If Bitcoin’s price dips lower, more efficient rigs will be needed to keep miners profitable. If it remains the same, conditions should be acceptable for the largest miners, especially those in places where energy subsidies exist for mining facilities.
Sources:- COINTELEGRAPH
