We had talked a few days ago about Bitcoin’s hashing power finally matching its price action a few days ago. In that article, we discussed how if hashing power goes down, then the difficulty will be adjusted accordingly, so that the Bitcoin network can work even with just a handful of miners. Today, we’ll be talking about Bitcoin mining difficulty and how it relates to what we’re seeing today.
Andreas Antonopoulos, a Bitcoin evangelist, spoke recently regarding Bitcoin mining and its difficulties. Doing so via a Youtube Q&A session, Antonopoulos spoke about the many issues that miners face today and why a BTC block is mined in (roughly) 10 minutes. Watch the video here.
Antonopoulos, in the video, said this about the 10 minute blocks: “The rule in Bitcoin is about the difficulty of doing the calculation, which is adjusted every two weeks. The average number of blocks in a period of time will equal a block about every ten minutes.”
The big question today is whether or not Bitcoin Mining will be and is still viable. Is it worth doing? Antonopoulos said that due to increasing hash power and cheap reliable power necessary and associated with Bitcoin mining, that it’s becoming more and more difficult to yield profits effectively. He stated:
“Let’s say that instead of 2016 blocks, we had 2217 blocks, or effectively 10% more blocks. The network [would adjust] the difficulty [to be] 10% [more difficult], the same ratio as the [percentage] of extra blocks we had versus the number of blocks we should have. Similarly, if we were 10% short, we would adjust by about 10% in the difficulty target. That calculation happens every two weeks, at exactly the same block, and affects the difficulty of the next block across the entire network.”
Let’s face it – 2018 hasn’t been pretty for the market. Many people who entered the market late last year have gone, scalped what little profits they may have had (if any), and have exited. We’ve seen the dramatic fall of Bitcoin through its latest support, and a lot of people aren’t feeling confident about Bitcoin.
But you know who is feeling confident about Bitcoin? Experts, lots of them, including Tom Lee and Galaxy Digital’s Mike Novogratz – they believe Bitcoin will come roaring back and scale beyond its previous ATH of $20,000. Banks are interested. Millennials are interested. Governments are even looking favorably upon cryptocurrency. Where will you be when the next bull run arrives? Follow us – and join us. Let us know on our Facebook page what your plan is!
