Bitcoin network difficulty drops to 27.693T as hash rate eyes recovery

The difficulty in mining a block of Bitcoin was reduced further by 5% to 27.693 trillion as network difficulty maintains its three-month-long downward streak ever since reaching an all-time high of 31.251 trillion back in May 2022. The reduced difficulty allows Bitcoin miners to confirm transactions using lower resources, enabling smaller miners a fighting chance to earn the mining rewards. While the difficulty adjustment is directly proportional to the hashing power of miners, the total hash rate recovered 3.2% along similar timelines, as shown below. At its peak, the Bitcoin hash rate reached an all-time high of 231.428 exahash per second when BTC prices fell to $25,000 last month in June - raising momentary concerns around extensive power usage. Ever since China banned all crypto trading and mining operations in June 2021, the United States picked up slack in becoming the highest contributor to the global Bitcoin hash rate. According to Statista data, the US represents 37.84% of the global hash rate, followed by China at 21.11% and Kazakhstan at 13.22%. Previously, Cointelegraph reported that meteoric drop in GPU prices have opened up a small window of opportunity for small-time miners to procure a piece of more powerful and efficient mining equipment. Easing up concerns related to exorbitant power usage, a report released by the Bitcoin Mining Council uncovered that nearly 60% of the electricity used for BTC mining comes from sustainable sources.