![\"Bitcoin\u2019s](\"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/hhjjkk78999000-768x432.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Bitcoin miners could catch a break in a week or so, on or around Dec. 5, 2022, as the next difficulty retarget is expected to see a significantly large reduction. Estimates show the next difficulty retarget could drop anywhere between 6.13% and 10% lower. Presently, the difficulty change looks as though it could be 2022\u2019s largest reduction if it surpasses the 5.01% decline recorded on July 21.<\/strong><\/p>\n When the last Bitcoin difficulty change occurred on Nov. 20, 2022, at block height 764,064, it increased by a mere 0.51% that day. The increase did, however, propel the network\u2019s difficulty to its lifetime high<\/a> of 36.95 trillion. Since then, during the past week, the network\u2019s average hashrate has been around 249.1 exahash per second (EH\/s).<\/p>\n The average Bitcoin network block time<\/a> has been slower than usual as well, running between 10.2 minutes to 11.06 minutes<\/a> on Monday evening (ET). The block intervals have been a lot higher since the difficulty change on Nov. 20, as prior to that day, block times had been on average less than ten minutes since Sept. 29.<\/p>\n The longer block times suggest the 2,016 blocks mined prior to the next retarget will be slower than the average of two weeks. At the time of writing, statistics indicate that the retarget could drop as low as 10% on Dec. 5, and metrics from Btc.com indicate<\/a> the drop is estimated to be around 6.13%.<\/p>\n Both estimates would outpace the largest difficulty contraction the Bitcoin network has seen all year with the largest decrease so far recorded on July 21, which was approximately -5.01%. Miners are currently dealing with the highest difficulty ever recorded,<\/a> and bitcoin (BTC<\/a>) prices are 76% lower than the all-time high ($69K) recorded on Nov. 10, 2021.<\/p>\n Mining insights<\/a> from braiins.com and macromicro.me<\/a> show BTC<\/a>\u2019s cost of production ($18,360) is above the current spot market value ($16,250). Additionally, market intelligence from Glassnode<\/a> indicates that bitcoin miners are tapping into their treasuries.<\/p>\n The onchain analytics firm Glassnode tweeted<\/a> about how the bitcoin mining sector and industry is \u201cunder immense financial stress,\u201d while announcing a mining report the firm published with Cryptoslate.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we find is that [bitcoin] miners are distributing around 135% of mined coins,\u201d Glassnode said. \u201cThis means miners are dipping into their 78K [bitcoin] strong treasuries.\u201d During the latter half of the year, publicly-listed mining operations have disclosed that they have been selling BTC<\/a> to bolster cash reserves and pay down debt.<\/p>\n At the time of writing at 7:30 p.m. (ET), Foundry USA\u2019s three-day hashrate is around 60.66 EH\/s, which represents 25.45% of the global hashrate. In three days, the largest mining pool Foundry mined 98 BTC<\/a> blocks out of 385 discovered by all the miners.<\/p>\n Foundry\u2019s hashrate is followed by Antpool, F2pool, Binance Pool, and Viabtc respectively. Between all five pools over the last three days, the top five mining pools were able to discover 315 blocks out of the 385 total.<\/p>\nBitcoin\u2019s Next Difficulty Retarget Is Expected to Decrease, Data Suggests a Notable Drop in the Cards<\/h2>\n