The difficulty of Bitcoin mining yesterday increased by 3.6% to a new all-time high. This followed a weekend of record hash rate levels, with the seven-day moving average reaching a new high. At block height 860,832, difficulty reached a record high of 92.67 billion, surpassing the previous peak of 90.67 billion reached at the end of July, according to Mempool data. The difficulty of Bitcoin mining indicates how difficult it is to mine a new block compared to how much easier it theoretically could be. The difficulty is automatically adjusted every 2,016 blocks, or roughly every two weeks, in order to ensure that a new block is found every 10 minutes on average, regardless of the number of active miners. As the difficulty increases, miners need more computing power and energy to find the correct hash for the next block.
