The Bitcoin network is doing well, and the mining difficulty has gone up because of the recent adjustment made by the protocol. According to data from Glassnode, a crypto on-chain analytics platform, the new adjustment has made it harder to mine a block, and it now requires a very large number of hashes, which is an all-time high of 209 zettahashes (10^21).
Following the latest #Bitcoin difficulty adjustment, the estimated number of hashes required to mine a block has reached an ATH of 209 zettahashes (10^21).
Thus, the difficulty to mine a block continues to increase as more hashpower is deployed to the network. pic.twitter.com/aXHhGwFIRw
— glassnode (@glassnode) April 28, 2023
The mining difficulty measures the performance of the Bitcoin network and is adjusted every two weeks for BTC. It can also be used for other digital currencies that use the Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism.
More miners are joining the Bitcoin network to try and earn the Bitcoin reward. The increase in mining difficulty is a sign of this. Last year, when the cryptocurrency market was not doing well, many miners had to stop their operations due to financial difficulties.
Regulators have different opinions about Bitcoin mining, which is a crucial part of the Bitcoin network. Some people believe that mining is harmful to the environment and should be banned. However, others argue that mining consumes less energy compared to other human activities. Recently, some miners who were forced to stop mining during the cryptocurrency market downturn are restarting their mining operations.
People are talking a lot about Bitcoin mining and there’s a movement for sustainable mining using renewable energy sources. Critics are suggesting that Bitcoin should change from the current mining process, called Proof-of-Work (PoW), to a different method called Proof-of-Stake (PoS), similar to Ethereum’s method that was implemented last year.
The developers of Ethereum faced many challenges while transitioning from PoW to PoS. However, the transition was successful, and it drastically reduced the energy consumption of the Ethereum network by over 99.9%.
Bitcoin supporters who strongly believe in the cryptocurrency have criticized the idea of transitioning from PoW to PoS. Although there is no ban on mining Bitcoin in major cryptocurrency centers, the use of Layer-2 protocols like the Lightning Network has become more popular for conducting transactions on the Bitcoin network.
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