The Bitcoin network has experienced a substantial downward adjustment.
According to Galaxy Research, Bitcoin recently completed its 11th-largest downward difficulty adjustment at block 953,568.
The difficulty fell by 10.09%, dropping from 138.96T to 124.93T.
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This recent drop marks the second-largest decline seen this year.
Drivers behind the hashrate decline
The sharp drop in the network hashrate was initially caused by price weakness experienced in early June.
Galaxy Research noted that a roughly 15% price decline in June heavily squeezed the margins for miners.
This profitability pressure forced some hashrate offline, with operators shutting down older mining rigs.
In addition to the financial pressures of mining, there is another key driver affecting the hashrate. Power capacity is increasingly being reallocated away from Bitcoin mining and toward high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) data centers.
Impact on the Bitcoin network
The exit of mining power has had a direct impact on the network’s operational speed.
The recent reduction in hashrate extended the length of the previous epoch to 15.6 days, missing the standard 14-day target. A standard Bitcoin difficulty retarget cycle consists of a 2,016 block cycle.
Currently, the Bitcoin block time average stands at 13.23 minutes.
The Bitcoin mining network is running 3.23 minutes slower than expected.
The difficulty algorithm utilized by the network is SHA-256, and data levels are calculated using daily difficulty average data points.
In the last 90 days, the average change is -13.86%.
Future adjustments
The recent 10.09% adjustment is anticipated to provide some relief for active miners.
The EnergyMag indicated that the adjustment is expected to increase BTC output per active hashrate by over 9%.
Furthermore, it may push the mining hash price back above the $30 per PH/s threshold.
The next difficulty adjustment is estimated to take place on Thursday.
Current estimates indicate another massive decrease of 24.43%, which would drop the Bitcoin mining difficulty from 124.93 T down to 94.41 T.