Bitcoin mining difficulty reaches record levels ahead of halving

Bitcoin mining difficulty has reached a new all-time high of 86.4 trillion, just before the Bitcoin halving event, according to BTC.com. The recent adjustment on April 10 increased the difficulty by 3.4% from the previous level of 83 trillion set on March 28. This increase in difficulty is in line with the growing mining difficulty of Bitcoin, which is expected to be cut in half during the halving event. The next difficulty adjustment is set to occur around April 24, while the halving itself is expected to take place on April 19. Bitcoin mining difficulty measures the complexity and time required to mine new blocks, and it adjusts every two weeks to maintain a target block time of 10 minutes. The difficulty level depends on the hash rate of the Bitcoin blockchain, which has seen a significant rise recently, going from 619 exahashes per second (EH/s) on March 28 to 696 EH/s on April 10. However, some analysts predict that the hash rate could drop after the halving, with as much as 20% of the current hash rate going offline due to lowered efficiency.