Bitcoin mining difficulty drops 3.34%

The Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) network experienced its first difficulty decrease since early March, falling by 3.34 percent at block height 895,104, according to data from mempool.space.

This adjustment reduced the mining difficulty from 123.23 trillion to 119.12 trillion, marking a shift after four consecutive increases over the past eight weeks.

Mining difficulty measures how many computational attempts are required to discover a valid block hash that meets the network’s target.

At 119.12 trillion, miners now must perform roughly that many hash calculations on average to mine a block, maintaining the network’s goal of producing one block approximately every 10 minutes.

Despite the difficulty decline, block times have averaged slightly longer than the target, at about 10 minutes and 22 seconds, as reported by hashrateindex.com on May 4, 2025.

The current global network hash rate stands at 885.51 exahashes per second (EH/s), up from 824 EH/s on April 27.

This increase in hash power coincides with a rise in miner profitability, as the hashprice—the estimated daily revenue per petahash per second of SHA256 computation—climbed from $45.87 on April 4 to $50.80 on May 4.

The higher hashprice has likely encouraged more mining activity, contributing to the elevated hash rate.

If block times continue above the 10-minute target, another difficulty adjustment downward is expected around May 18.

However, fluctuations in hash rate could alter block intervals and impact future difficulty changes.

“The difficulty adjustment mechanism ensures the Bitcoin blockchain remains stable despite changes in mining power,” noted a network spokesperson.

At the time of reporting, the Bitcoin (BTC) price was $94,135.65.