It has been a long time since Bitcoin miners had not been surprised by such an adjustment of the mining difficulty.
In short
- Bitcoin's mining difficulty adjusts all 2,016 blocks to maintain a rhythm of production of a block every 10 minutes.
- The recent decrease in Hashrate, linked to the interruptions of Texans minors during heat waves led to an adjustment of the difficulty of 7.50 %, the most important since 2021 and the Chinese “ban”.
What is the difficulty of mining?
The Bitcoin protocol regularly adjusts the difficulty of mine transactions. All 2,016 blocks to be precise, every two weeks normally.
This recalibration (“difficulty adds” in English) aims to ensure that the blocks are mined every 10 minutes approximately, regardless of the evolution of the number of minors.
If more minors join the network, the difficulty adjusts upwards in order to slow down the production of blocks. And vice versa. If minors leave the network, the difficulty adjusts downwards to accelerate the production of blocks and return to the rhythm of a block every ten minutes.
“Miner” means to vary a nuncio frantically (that is to say an arbitrary number) which, once chopped by the Sha-256 cryptographic algorithm with the transactions of the block, produces a hash.
This hash is concretely a number. “Mining a block” consists in finding, out of tests and errors, a number lower than a target value. It is this target value that is adjusted every 2,016 blocks, depending on the time it took to undermine the 2,016 previous blocks.
For example, if the last 2016 blocks were mined in more than 20,160 minutes, the target number will be changed to slow down the pace to which minors manage to undermine blocks. And so on.
It takes an average of 480,000 billion billion tests (hashrate) to undermine a block and receive the reward of 3,125 BTC. In our example, this means that it will take less tests on average to find a block.
On June 29, the adjustment was 7.50 %. We hadn't seen such a recalibration for several years.
For what ?
This is the most violent adjustment since the famous “ban” of 2021, when the Chinese authorities had brutally forced many minors to close shop. The adjustment was at the time of 28 %.
In question, the collapse of the hashrate from 175 eh to 85 eh. In other words, more than 50 % of minors were Chinese in 2021. This time, the drop in the hashrate was more modest. We went from 942 Exehash to 782 EH.
Some have put this adjustment on the account of the bombing of Iranian nuclear power plants. Iran being disconnected from the Swift network, the country has been using Bitcoin for several years to settle its imports. Perhaps this is part of the explanation.
However, it would seem that the drop in hashrate is mainly linked to the erasure program for Texans minors. Explanation :
Texas has realized that bitcoin minors allow energeticians to smooth out impromptu consumption peaks, during heat waves for example.
It is indeed difficult to anticipate the demand for energy during the hottest hours of the summer or the coldest in winter. It follows that it is necessary to keep cutting -edge power plants in case. Centrals that stay at most of the time and have a cost.
The idea is to replace these cutting -edge plants with bitcoin minors who have the advantage of being able to restore the network instantly and as long as necessary.
The recent decrease in the hashrate is that temperatures in the United States were 5 to 8 ° C above the averages. And with approximately 40 % of the computing power (hashrate) located in the United States, it is not surprising to observe a drop in the hashrate.
Bitcoin, the luxury fuse
Minors are distinguished by their unique ability to consume a high basic load and fade during peaks. Is there someone at RTE (French electric transport network) who is working on the subject?
The balance of the electricity network by demand is essential to accommodate the development of intermittent energies and the puzzle they represent.
The presence of minors eliminates the risks of breakdowns and reduces the cost of energy by offering an outlet for otherwise subsidized intermittent energies. And let's not talk about nuclear power plants that are damaged to accommodate solar and wind.
Bitcoin is an adjustment variable by demand that supports everyone. It is a great load shedding solution to balance demand and electricity production in real time.
More than 57 % of Texans miners have erased on request in 2023. They returned a total of 888 GWh to the network. This symbiosis works so that the network manager finally canceled the construction of several state -of -the -art power plants. And this thanks to the 3 GW that minors can make at any time.
In France, deputies continue to ignore foot calls to undermine thanks to nuclear power plants. Other aberration, Norwegian minors would be on the hot seat While the north of the country is crumbling under the surpluses of hydraulic energy.
Let us finish by adding that the heat produced by the Bitcoin industry can also be recycled. Many projects are underway, especially in the Scandinavian countries:
The icing on the cake, the Bitcoin industry is the greenest in the world, more than 52 %, constantly increasing. The reason is that the cheapest electricity comes from ENR.
Don't miss our article: No blackout with bitcoin minors!
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