Bitcoin miners continue to invest in updated hardware as well as new facilities. This is despite the world’s most valuable digital assets having been trading sideways since March.
The hashrate – a measure of the processing power contributed to the Bitcoin network – reached an all-time high of 455 exahashes per second (EH/s) on October 12 and has doubled since the beginning of the year.
On October 16, for example, Bitcoin’s difficulty surpassed 61 trillion at block height 812,448, marking a new record for the network. Bitcoin difficulty is a measure of how difficult it is to mine new blocks on the Bitcoin blockchain, automatically adjusting approximately every two weeks – 2016 blocks – to maintain a 10-minute block time.
Difficulty and hashrate in Bitcoin are related. After all, as the total network hashrate increases, the difficulty level adjusts upward to maintain system stability.
Currently, the top five mining pools are Foundry USA, Antpool, Viabtc, F2pool, and Binance Pool. Last week, Foundry contributed 29% of the network’s overall hashrate. Next came Antpool with 27%.
Halving do Bitcoin
Currently, once a miner successfully mines a block, they are rewarded with 6.25 BTC, as well as transaction fees paid by users for including their transactions in the block.
But every four years, this block reward is halved, with the next halving in just six months. The crypto community closely monitors halving events and they have significant effects on the mining economy.
This is because as the block reward decreases, miners must rely more on transaction fees, which can lead to increased competition between them and potentially higher transaction fees for users.
Halving events will continue until there is a maximum supply of 21 million Bitcoins, which is expected to occur in the year 2140. After this point, no new Bitcoins will be created through mining. In this sense, miners are expected to rely solely on transaction fees for their rewards.
*Translation of the article “Bitcoin Hashrate Continues To Hit All-time Highs” with permission from The Defiant.
Disclaimer: The text presented in this column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of CriptoFácil.
Source: https://www.criptofacil.com/taxa-de-hash-do-bitcoin-continua-atingindo-maximos-historicos/
