Despite recent struggles and falling prices, the Bitcoin blockchain hashrate has increased significantly recently. Blocks are probably discovered faster than the average ten minute interval. What does this increase in hashing power indicate and what should we expect?
Bitcoin (BTC): The Expansion Could Happen Faster Than Expected!
The entire cryptosphere is staring at Ethereum right now. But while The Merge is getting all the investors’ attention, the Bitcoin network is dramatically increasing its hashrate, accelerating block intervals in the process. On September 4, 2022, its fast lifetime hashrate reached 301.45 EH/s at a block height of 752,510.
Currently, 244.62 exahash per second (EH/s) are dedicated to the largest blockchain. A few days before the end of August, it was noted that bitcoin (BTC) block times were much faster than the ten minute average. At the same time, the average block time was less than eight minutes.
This suggests that the Bitcoin network halving should happen much sooner than expected. In fact, the site bitcoinsensus.com shows two counters. One tracks the average of ten minutes per block, and the other tracks the running times of a block of 8.5 minutes.
Therefore, there is a good chance that the half will be done after 509 days instead of 598 days. According to bitcoinsensus.com, this decrease is likely to occur on March 2, 2024 based on actual block times. This is earlier than the often used estimate of May 3, 2024.
Increased hashing power, what are the consequences?
The increase in the Bitcoin network hashrate, as usual, will no doubt increase the difficulty. This happens harmlessly when block times are faster than the average ten minutes and stay faster for two weeks before the difficulty changes.
This came on August 31 when the Bitcoin blockchain printed its second highest difficulty. In addition, the block reward will also be halved. Currently, the block reward is 6.25 BTC per block. After the next half, miners will start receiving 3,125 tokens per block.
However, increasing the difficulty does not seem to have any negative effects on miners. The next difficulty change scheduled for September 15 is expected to increase further by more than 3%. However, BTC adoption is increasing.
Bitcoin increases its hashrate as the market crypto still bearish from historic highs. However, despite the half potentially coming earlier than expected and the change in difficulty, BTC continues to impress. The IS raison ? It is certainly possible that the price of bitcoin will rise faster than expected if the spread were to accelerate.
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The world is changing and adaptation is the best weapon to survive in this turbulent world. As a crypto community manager at the base, I am interested in everything directly or indirectly related to the blockchain and its derivatives. To share my experience and express an area of interest to me, there is nothing better than writing articles that are informative and entertaining at the same time.
