According to data from BitcoinWisdom.com, the bitcoin’s (BTC) mining difficulty is about to decrease by -14.30% in the next couple of days. It’ll be the very first time, when bitcoin is losing in the difficulty so much since 2011.
What is the difficulty and how it deals with bitcoin?
In a few words, the difficulty defines how many cryptocurrency miners are participating in a blockchain. In a more scientific way, the difficulty represents a measure of how much is difficult to find a hash of transaction and decode it.
The bitcoin blockchain and mining pools have their own specific share difficulty settings with a certain level of share.
So the bitcoin blockchain becoming less secure with decreased difficulty?
You can say so, yes. However, the bitcoin blockchain still has many miners to secure itself. At press time, there are 24 crypto mining pools. Slushpool, for example, has approximately 192,000 active miners.
How often does the blockchain difficulty change?
Every 2016 blocks. It's approximately two weeks.
Why 2016?
No one can say for sure.
So the difficulty is falling down because of miners who are shutting down their farms?
That’s right. Since September, the bitcoin price has been slipping, so given the current statistics it's not profitable for many miners to use their equipment. Though it also means that there is still a great chance that they will come back if there is good news on the horizon.
Does it mean that bitcoin will cost $0 in 2019?
There’s still a very low probability that BTC will cost $0 at all. At least in the next couple of years. The price may fall even lower, though it’s still quite unrealistic that bitcoin will cost $0.
Why is that?
Well, the first reason is a community. Do you see, almost $135 billion in market cap doesn't disappear in one day or month, or even year.
The second reason why it’s quite unreal that bitcoin will cost $0 is because of the massive adoption all around the world.
In addition the upcoming arrival of institutions will only open a new chapter in the bitcoin history, not close it.
So… HODL?
HODL!
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Disclaimer: This article should not be used for making financial decisions.