Bitcoin mining difficulty today dropped by 15.95 percent — the second largest decline in its history. The last time a downward adjustment took place, the Bitcoin price plummeted more than 50% percent. Bitcoin difficulty Bitcoin’s difficulty is designed to adjust every 2016 blocks — or approximately every two weeks. This adjustment is based on changes in the network’s hashrate, and occurs regularly in an attempt to ensure that the network continues to solve new blocks at a rate of one every 10 minutes. If the hashrate during the past two weeks has gone up, the difficulty will go up as …

Philip Salter, head of operations at Genesis Mining, believes that economic meltdown may lead to a growing value for Bitcoin as a hedge against the banks. In the last couple of weeks, there has been a lot of turmoil in the Bitcoin world. There was a rapid decline in hashrate, followed by an even more precipitous price drop. This was particularly troublesome in view of the impending halving. Cointelegraph has had an in-depth conversation on these topics with one of the most prominent figures in the Bitcoin mining space, Phil Salter. Bitcoin miners have margin calls too Speaking on whether …

Famous trader Peter Brandt explained why he is convinced that the impact of the block reward halving is less relevant for Bitcoin’s (BTC) price than most believe. In a March 17 tweet, Brandt explained that he considers the daily trading volume of Bitcoin to be its real supply. Because of this, he believes that the daily reduction of mined Bitcoins is equivalent to about 2/100th of 1% of the real supply. Is Peter Brandt right? Brandt concluded that the reduction of new supply due to halving is “chump change” when considered as a percentage of the real Bitcoin supply. Still, …

There appears to be increasing anxiety in cryptocurrency markets after the prices of Bitcoin (BTC) failed to maintain above the psychological $10,000 level in February. The disappointment came less than three months ahead of the highly anticipated Bitcoin halving. Although Bitcoin had performed relatively well compared to other major asset classes before massive corrections happened in March, recent macro events have long been looming in both the traditional and crypto markets. That extra layer of uncertainty seems to remain intact, at least into the near future. Related: Institutions Eye Bitcoin as Hedge Against Global Economic Volatility However, looking back in …

Curiously, the search term “bitcoin coronavirus” has overtaken “bitcoin halving” on Google Trends. The odd search term is seeing the most traffic from Europe. Research indicates that Austria, Switzerland, and Ireland comprise the three jurisdictions that produce the most searches for “bitcoin coronavirus.” 12-Month Search Trends for “Bitcoin halving” and “Bitcoin coronavirus”: Google Singapore, Germany, Australia, and Canada are also producing significant traffic for the keyword, while the United States ranks 13th. Interest in ‘Bitcoin halving’ outpaces ‘ETH 2.0’ Interest in the Bitcoin’s upcoming halving is significantly dwarfing queries for Ethereum’s (ETH) upcoming ETH 2.0 revamp. 12-Month Search Trends for …

According to Chainalysis’ March 5th webinar, over $1 trillion worth of cryptocurrency transactions took place in 2019 with only 1.1% of them being illicit. Source: Chainalysis Diminishing of darknet markets Overall, as crypto adoption keeps on growing and the number of use cases for cryptocurrency expands, illicit transactions on a percentage basis, keep diminishing; implying that the industry today is much healthier than in the early days when much of the volume was driven by darknet markets. Industry-wide cooperation thwarts crypto hackers Source: Chainalysis As more cryptocurrency enters exchanges, they remain the most coveted targets for crypto hackers. However, the …

A New York power plant turns to Bitcoin mining in a successful bid to increase profitability. Bloomberg reported on Mar. 5 that a power plant in New York’s Finger Lakes region now mines about $50,000 of Bitcoin (BTC) each day using the electricity it produces. Atlas Holding, the private equity company that owns the facility, installed 7,000 crypto mining machines at the Greenidge Generation’s 65,000-square-foot power plant in Dresden, New York. The firm pointed out that since it produces the power consumed by the machines on its own, the mining operation is extremely low cost. An extremely profitable operation Cryptocurrency …

The price of Bitcoin (BTC) has dropped right before and after the two previous block-reward halving events in 2012 and 2016. BTC is demonstrating a similar trend approaching the May 2020 halving. A theory has emerged that miners tend to sell before the halving to accumulate enough Bitcoin to finance their operations for many months after the halving occurs, allowing them to hold onto the majority of Bitcoin they mine. Theoretically, such a practice would be beneficial for miners because the break-even price of Bitcoin mining spikes significantly when a block-reward halving occurs. According to James Todaro, head of research …

In today’s crypto market discussion, Cointelegraph is joined by crypto analyst Naeem Aslam, and the CEO of Tokenmetrics Ian Balina to discuss the impact of the coronavirus on the cryptocurrency markets. Will the economic impacts of the coronavirus leave people flocking to cryptocurrencies as a safe haven? Naeem Aslam is skeptical of Bitcoin’s purported ‘safe haven’ status, emphasizing that Bitcoin is a haven from central bank monetary policy, and not infectious diseases: “I think when we talk about Bitcoin as a safe haven asset, we're really talking about in relation to central banks and their monetary policies. Right now, we …

As the Bitcoin halving draws ever nearer, the demand for the digital asset keeps soaring, having seen an increase of around 15% against the United States dollar in the past month. The Bitcoin halving is predicted to take place during May 2020 and will see Bitcoin’s issuance rate decrease from 12.5 to 6.25 BTC every block or around every 10 minutes. As time goes on, Bitcoin’s scarcity and high stock to flow rate continue to make it an increasingly attractive asset for investors. As Bitcoin’s journey toward the mainstream continues to push forward, it is important to attempt to find …

The United States Federal Reserve will cut its interest rate target to compete with Bitcoin (BTC) post-halving, traders believe. As Reuters reported on Feb. 28, Wall Street traders already consider the likelihood of the Fed cutting rates to boost the economy over coronavirus to be more than 75%. Fed “monitoring” coronavirus By September, the cuts could total 0.75%, bringing the short-term interest rate below 1% for the first time in three years. The Fed did not appear rattled by coronavirus, which is now spreading more quickly outside its epicenter of China than within it. “I think it would be premature …

Fundstrat’s Tom Lee was the main highlight of last week’s Blockchain Economy 2020 event in Istanbul, Turkey. Taking the stage on day two, Lee addressed a crypto-savvy audience for about half an hour. Before delving into why Bitcoin (BTC) would see a price hike this year, Lee started his speech with a nod to the famous comparison between the internet and blockchain: “The most important generational trade over the next twenty years is going to stand around the disruption of the financial industry. And the most important of these technologies are going to be blockchain and crypto.” Those two topics …