Bitcoin price prediction: mining difficulty rises 5.92 percent, what it means for selling pressure

2 hours ago 3

Bitcoin trades at $81,017 on Sunday evening, and the weekend’s most important number is not in the chart but in the protocol itself: since October 16 the network has demanded 5.92 percent more computing work for the same block. Mining difficulty climbed with block 971,712 to 140.58 trillion, its highest level since March 5. At the same time the price has fallen from $84,506 to $81,017 since the previous adjustment on October 3. More effort, less revenue: for miners that is the squeeze which ultimately decides how much they have to sell.

Difficulty is the Bitcoin network’s automatic adjustment screw. Every 2,016 blocks, roughly every two weeks, the protocol measures how quickly the past blocks were found and resets the difficulty so that a block is produced every ten minutes on average. For the longer-term view of where the price can head over a horizon of months, see our Bitcoin price prediction. For the next two weeks, though, what counts is the miners’ short-term arithmetic, and that shifted noticeably on October 16.