Despite China’s ongoing crackdown on cryptocurrency mining, mining Bitcoin ( BTC ) continues to be easier than ever as BTC’s mining difficulty has dropped again.
According to data from Bitcoin Explorer BTC.com, the Bitcoin network recorded its fourth consecutive negative adjustment in mining difficulty on July 18. dropped 4.8%
Block 691 488 saw the latest mining difficulty adjustment, which reduced the difficulty rate from 13.7 trillion to 14.4 trillion. This is the lowest level since June 2020. After reaching 25 trillion in May 13, the difficulty metrics have almost been halved in the last two months.
After a string of difficulty drops, the latest Bitcoin mining adjustment comes after a near 16% drop on May 29. Additional negative adjustments were made with a 5.3% decline on June 13, and a huge 28% drop on July 3, which was the largest mining difficulty drop on Bitcoin.
Bitcoin mining difficulty measures how difficult it is to mine a BTC-block. A higher difficulty requires additional computing power to verify transactions, and to mine new coins. Bitcoin’s mining difficulty adjustment happens every 2,016 blocks or approximately every two weeks. This is because Bitcoin is programmed so that it can self-adjust to keep a target block time at 10 minutes.
The ongoing mining difficulty drop in Bitcoin is due to the continuing migration of Bitcoin miners out of China, which has been prompted by the crackdown by local authorities on cryptocurrency mining. This continues difficulty drop is accompanied by a declining Bitcoin hashrate and decreasing average BTC transaction costs.
