Bitcoin (BTC) Network Posts Another Hashrate Record
Bitcoin mining is now more active thanks to increased hydroelectric activity in China, coupled with more efficient mining rigs.
Bitcoin mining is now more active thanks to increased hydroelectric activity in China, coupled with more efficient mining rigs.
Bitcoin (BTC)has become increasingly attractive for miners in the first half of 2019, and the trend kept in July. The network posted yet another record, reaching74 EH/s, up from a peak a few days back at 72 EH/s.
As BTC prices once again settled above $10,600, there is enough stability to ensure that even the most current mining rigs are a good annual investment. The mix of constantly growing BTC prices and higher activity by Chinese miners has led to the new record.
Back in 2017, when the rising trend for BTC was just beginning, the hashrate was around 12 times lower, at just 6 EH/s. The Bitcoin network remains the most powerful and backed by the most ASIC machines, thus making it difficult to attack.
Mining difficulty is also rising as more machines compete to solve a block. In the past six months, the difficulty has nearly doubled. At the same time, BTC usage remains tied to speculative activity, with transactions at around 400 to 500 thousands per day, and around 500,000 active wallets. Currently, it would cost more than $861,000 to attack the Bitcoin network, and Nicehash and other hired cloud mining services do not have the resources to compete with large block producers.
Once again, a handful oflarge-scale poolsproduce most of the blocks. Those include BTC.com, BTC.top, ViaBTC, Poolin and Antpool, as well as Slush and Huobi. The leading pools manage to take up most of the mining activity and ensure block discovery. This is also one of the reasons for the high competition and the addition of new hashing power.
One of the leading pressures to compete for more Bitcoin block rewards is the upcoming halving of the reward, arriving in less than six months. Miners are struggling to get as much rewards as possible at 12.5 BTC per block, as revenues from transaction fees are still relatively lower.