Bitcoin mining: After a historic drop in 2018, difficulty rises by 10% for the first time

According to foreign media reports, Bitcoin mining difficulty has finally stabilized after several months of continuous decline. According to data provided by Bitcoin Wisdom, in November and December, the difficulty of the Bitcoin network experienced a sharp decline. Now, after the turmoil in the crypto market in 2018, Bitcoin mining difficulty has increased for the first time.

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From August to early December, Bitcoin's hash difficulty has been declining. The price of Bitcoin fell to a new low in a year, which had an impact on the entire network. Miners could not continue mining at the same difficulty due to no profit. This directly led to multiple mining farms taking their mining machines offline, and many other miners stopped mining Bitcoin.

The increase in the difficulty of mining, which automatically adjusts the difficulty of computing power and verifies transactions based on the computing power of miners, indicates that Bitcoin mining has begun to recover after the downward adjustment of computing power difficulty from November to December.

Mining difficulty increased throughout 2018. The largest increase in difficulty occurred on January 25, when it increased by 16.84%. In November and December, the hash rate dropped by almost 60%, with the largest adjustment occurring on December 3, when it dropped by 15.13%. On December 31, Bitcoin's hash rate increased by 10.03%, the largest increase since July 29, 2018.

Alistair Milne, an investor and crypto entrepreneur, commented on the increase in mining difficulty on Twitter. He mentioned that some people say that the Bitcoin network will lose most of its miners due to the price drop. However, since the largest drop in history of 50% in August 2018, the Bitcoin network has just seen an upward adjustment and the hash difficulty seems to be recovering. He said:

“Still filled with fear, uncertainty and doubt about the Bitcoin mining death spiral? Bitcoin mining difficulty just adjusted upward by 10%!”

Although few experts are currently predicting a major bull run in the short term, Bitcoin’s fundamentals are proving to be very positive. The Lightning Network (LN) has seen significant improvements and the number of its registered addresses has increased.