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Bitcoin Difficulty Adjustment Estimator

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https://newhedge.io/api/v2/metrics/difficulty-estimator/difficulty_estimator

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Live updating Bitcoin difficulty estimator and visualization of the current mining epoch

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Bitcoin Difficulty Estimator

Loading Bitcoin Blocks...

mined & expected

mined & unexpected

unmined & expected

unmined & unexpected

being mined

Historical Bitcoin Difficulty Adjustments

Height	Date	Previous Difficulty	Difficulty Adjusted	% Change
949536	05/15/2026	132,472,011,079,030	136,607,070,854,775	3.12%
947520	05/02/2026	135,594,876,535,256	132,472,011,079,030	-2.30%
945504	04/17/2026	138,966,872,071,213	135,594,876,535,256	-2.43%
943488	04/03/2026	133,793,147,307,542	138,966,872,071,213	3.87%
941472	03/20/2026	145,042,165,424,853	133,793,147,307,542	-7.76%
939456	03/05/2026	144,398,401,518,100	145,042,165,424,853	0.45%
937440	02/19/2026	125,864,590,119,494	144,398,401,518,100	14.73%
935424	02/07/2026	141,668,107,417,558	125,864,590,119,494	-11.16%
933408	01/24/2026	146,472,570,619,930	141,668,107,417,558	-3.28%
931392	01/08/2026	148,258,433,855,481	146,472,570,619,930	-1.20%
929376	12/25/2025	148,195,306,640,204	148,258,433,855,481	0.04%
927360	12/11/2025	149,301,205,959,699	148,195,306,640,204	-0.74%
925344	11/27/2025	152,271,405,447,597	149,301,205,959,699	-1.95%
923328	11/12/2025	155,973,032,196,071	152,271,405,447,597	-2.37%
921312	10/29/2025	146,716,052,770,107	155,973,032,196,071	6.31%
919296	10/16/2025	150,839,487,445,890	146,716,052,770,107	-2.73%
917280	10/01/2025	142,342,602,928,674	150,839,487,445,890	5.97%
915264	09/18/2025	136,039,872,848,261	142,342,602,928,674	4.63%
913248	09/05/2025	129,699,156,960,680	136,039,872,848,261	4.89%
911232	08/22/2025	129,435,235,580,344	129,699,156,960,680	0.20%
000000	00/00/0000	000,000,000,000	000,000,000,000	+0.00%
000000	00/00/0000	000,000,000,000	000,000,000,000	+0.00%
000000	00/00/0000	000,000,000,000	000,000,000,000	+0.00%
000000	00/00/0000	000,000,000,000	000,000,000,000	+0.00%
000000	00/00/0000	000,000,000,000	000,000,000,000	+0.00%
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Latest Difficulty Estimator snapshot

https://newhedge.io/api/v2/metrics/difficulty-estimator/difficulty_estimator

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What is Bitcoin difficulty?

Bitcoin's difficulty is simply a measure of how difficult it is mine a block. The current difficulty number represents the number of hashes required to mine a single block.

A Bitcoin hash is deterministic with pseudorandom result, this means that everyone can calculate the target on their own and reach the same target. Hashing to a target difficulty is stochastic (randomly determined).

The difficulty is designed to maintain the rate of coin issuance and block confirmation times as the network grows or contracts.

Difficulty adjusts every 2,016 blocks (~2 weeks). A block sequence with the same difficulty is referred to as a "difficulty epoch".

How is difficulty calculated?

On the 2,016th block of the difficulty epoch, the difficulty is recalculated. If blocks are mined faster than 10 minutes on average, the difficulty increases (target decreases). If blocks are mined slower, the difficulty decreases (target increases).

The simple formula for calculating the difficulty level is as follows:

Difficulty = Difficulty Target / Current Target

Difficulty Target is the highest possible target to be reached with a block hash.

Current Target is the hexadecimal difficulty derived from the 256-bit number in a block header.

Difficulty is the approximate number of hashes required to mine a single block. The current difficulty is 52.39 trillion (T)

How to read the chart (the colored blocks)

The Newhedge estimator breaks the current epoch into blocks and categories:

Mined & Expected → Blocks mined on schedule
Mined & Unexpected → Blocks mined faster than expected
Unmined & Expected → Remaining blocks if pace stays normal
Unmined & Unexpected → Remaining blocks if pace stays fast/slow
Being mined → Current block in progress

This lets you visually see whether the network is ahead or behind schedule in the current epoch.

Why is the target block time supposed to be 10 minutes?

Bitcoin maintains its block time to be around 10 minutes with its difficulty adjustment algorithm. So why not 1 minute? Or one hour?

Because Satoshi never explained why block times need to average 10 minutes, we can only assume why this was chosen.

One explanation is that 10 minutes is a sufficient amount of time for nodes to propagate blocks to all other nodes in a peer-to-peer fashion.

After a Bitcoin block is mined, it takes time for other miners in the network to find out about it, and until then, the miners are actually competing against this new block instead of adding to it.

If someone mines another new block based on the old blockchain state, the network can only accept one of the two, and all the work that went into the other block gets wasted.

For example, if it takes miners 1 minute on average to learn about new blocks and new blocks come every 10 minutes, then the overall network is wasting about 10% of its work. Lengthening the time between blocks reduces this waste.

What is a difficulty epoch?

Each 2016-block interval is known as a difficulty epoch. With an average block time of 10 minutes, this averages to a two-week period. At the beginning of every epoch, the Bitcoin network recalculates the difficulty.

The Bitcoin network does this by measuring the time it took to find the last 2,016 blocks and comparing it to the expected time of 20,160 minutes (2,016 * desired 10-minute block time)

This ratio results in difficulty moving up or down.

Fun facts & bugs

BUG! Due to a longstanding bug in the Bitcoin source code, the time spent mining the first block in each difficulty epoch actually has no effect on the next difficulty calculation. Even if this block somehow took an entire year to mine, it would not cause the next difficulty to drop, believe it or not!

The calculations on this site take this bug into account to help produce the most accurate difficulty estimate possible. For more information on this bug, please refer to this section of Andreas Antonopoulos's book, Mastering Bitcoin.

Fun fact! Even if all the world's energy, resources, and computers were directed to mining bitcoin, the difficulty adjustment would readjust and keep block times 10 minutes on average. This preserves Bitcoin’s unique supply schedule and supply limit of 21 million coins, a level that will only be reached in the year 2140.

Bitcoin Difficulty Adjustment Estimator

Live updating Bitcoin difficulty estimator and visualization of the current mining epoch

Historical Bitcoin Difficulty Adjustments

Next Difficulty Change

Last Updated

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What is Bitcoin difficulty?

How is difficulty calculated?

How to read the chart (the colored blocks)

Why is the target block time supposed to be 10 minutes?

What is a difficulty epoch?

Fun facts & bugs

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