It looks as if Bitcoin Cash prepares for another mining difficulty adjustment. This change will occur in roughly 600 blocks from now. So far, all adjustments have resulted in a lower mining difficulty. This makes it somewhat more profitable to mine BCH, albeit BTC miners would still lose out. It will be interesting to see how the next change affects the mining industry as a whole.These adjustments are good to keep track of, though.
Mining Bitcoin Cash still isn’t profitable right now. Even with the chain at 13% of the regular Bitcoin mining difficulty, miners would lose money doing so. That is quite disconcerting, but there is little to be done. With more people still dumping BCH across exchanges, the token’s value is too low to mine unless you have incredibly efficient hardware. Most consumers and small mining operations do not have that luxury, unfortunately.
A Crucial Difficulty Adjustment for Bitcoin Cash
With a few dozen blocks found on the Bitcoin Cash network these past 24 hours, the new adjustment will be significant. It does not appear the change will be negative by any means. A lower difficulty will result in more efficient mining for everyone. A higher difficulty will weed out people who simply mine BCH to drive the price lower by selling on exchanges. According to BitcoinTicker, the mining difficulty will nearly triple at the current rate.
More specifically, the estimated change is 256.92%. That is quite a significant jump compared to the current difficulty, to say the least. Then again, with miners finding more blocks, an increase is the likely outcome. It will take another week or so until this change goes into effect, though. For now, it is hard to predict whether or not such a major leap will effectively take place. As we get closer to the change block, the estimates will look very different compared to right now.
One thing to keep in mind is how a higher mining difficulty requires a lot more hashpower. This means more people will need to jump on the mining train for BCH in the future. If this were to happen, and the BCH price rises to around US$400, things will get very interesting. Considering how mining Bitcoin is 62% more profitable, reaching parity will be a big challenge. However, it doesn’t take all that much effort to make that percentage go down by quite a margin. An intriguing situation to keep an eye, that much is evident.
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