On December 20, 2023, the Bitcoin network hashrate reached a new historical high, according to the seven-day SMA of Luxor's hashrateindex.com. The current hashrate is 527 EH/s, equivalent to 527 quintillion hashes per second, surpassing half a zettahash per second (Zh/s). Over the last 90 days, the average hashrate fluctuated around 462 EH/s, with the latest 2016 blocks showing an average of 496.8 EH/s.
Luxor also notes that on Wednesday, the three-day SMA peak of the hashrate reached 539 EH/s. The current block time varies from 8 minutes 47 seconds to 9 minutes 31 seconds, faster than the standard 10-minute interval. This increase in hashrate speeds up block processing and is likely to lead to an increase in mining difficulty from 3.11% to 5.2%. The next Bitcoin difficulty adjustment is scheduled for December 23, 2023.
Currently, about 49 mining pools contribute to the BTC network, with Foundry USA leading in the last three days. Foundry USA has overtaken Antpool, reaching 164.24 EH/s, which is 31.76% of the total hashrate. Antpool has 126.51 EH/s, or 24.46% of the total share. Together, both pools controlled over 56.22% of the total Bitcoin hashrate on December 20, 2023.
In December 2023, Bitcoin miners have already set new annual records for revenue from fees. In November, transaction fees brought miners a record $142 million, and in December, they have already collected $202 million. The total income from block rewards and transaction fees this month reached $953 million. The fee for high-priority transactions still exceeds $15.
There are over 300,000 pending transactions in the mempool, requiring a total of 359 blocks to process the unconfirmed transactions.
