Bitcoin mining difficulty rises 5.5%, next retarget may bring 2.8% decrease

Bitcoin ’s mining difficulty, which determines how hard miners must work to validate new blocks, automatically adjusts every 2,016 blocks to maintain a stable average block time near 10 minutes. This adjustment mechanism is embedded within Bitcoin’s proof-of-work consensus rules and operates without the involvement of any central authority, company, or mining pool. At the heart of the process, Bitcoin Core software compares timestamps between the most recent block and the block at a height 2,015 blocks earlier. The protocol targets a 14-day period for each cycle of 2,016 blocks, which equates to roughly 1,209,600 seconds. If the actual time to mine these blocks is less than or greater than 14 days, the software recalculates the mining difficulty to compensate for the difference.

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