GlossaryDifficulty
Difficulty
Difficulty indicates how hard it is to find a valid Bitcoin block. The network adjusts it regularly so that a block is created every ten minutes on average, no matter how much computing power is currently at work.
How to read it
- Difficulty follows the hashrate with a delay. If it rises over a long time, more and more computing power is working in the network.
- A downward adjustment means miners have left the network, for example after a price crash or after the 2021 mining ban in China.
- For miners, a higher difficulty means less Bitcoin per unit of computing power. Together with the price, it decides whether mining pays off.
- Compared with the hashrate, difficulty is smoothed, because it only changes every 2,016 blocks. It is well suited for seeing the trend in computing power without daily noise.
Good to know
- Bitcoin only. Difficulty has no unit; the axis shows it in short form (M, B, T).
- One value per day. The pane header reads “Difficulty · On-chain”.
- The only settings are on the Style tab: Appearance (default: line).