Bitcoin mining difficulty hits an all-time high, expected to decrease on August 9
According to Cointelegraph, Bitcoin mining difficulty reached an all-time high of 127.6 trillion this week, and is expected to decrease by about 3% to 123.7 trillion in the difficulty adjustment on August 9. The current average block time is approximately 10 minutes and 20 seconds.
CryptoQuant data shows that mining difficulty decreased in June, dropped to 116.9 trillion in the first half of July, but then resumed a long-term upward trend. Mining difficulty and network hash rate are crucial for miner profitability and Bitcoin's high stock-to-flow ratio.
The stock-to-flow ratio measures the ratio of the total supply of a financial asset or commodity to its new supply. Bitcoin's stock-to-flow ratio is higher than gold, with about 94% of BTC already mined. Adjusting the difficulty makes Bitcoin prices insensitive to production, preventing excessive supply from causing price crashes.