Following a month of rising Bitcoin (BTC) mining difficulty, the first adjustment in September saw the difficulty drop - though it still remains at the second-highest level in the network's history.
Bitcoin mining difficulty, or the measure of how hard it is to compete for mining rewards, dropped 1.21% today, but it was not enough for it to drop out of the 17 T level. It's now sitting at 17.35 T.
The all-time high was reached just last adjustment, at the end of August, thanks to a rise of 3.6%.
Bitcoin's price has also dropped in the past week from the USD 12,000 it shortly touched again at the very beginning of this month. Holding the USD 11,000 level for a couple of days, it then fell below it on September 3, which was followed by a steep decline, and even a brief dip below USD 10,000 two days later. It's currently (13:12 UTC), trading at USD 9,926. It dropped by 3% in a day and 15% in a week.
Bitcoin price chart. Source: Coinpaprika
Meanwhile, the hashrate, or the computational power of the network, has gone up nearly 2% since the previous adjustment, as the 7-day simple moving average shows: from 122 E on August 24 to 124.43 E recorded yesterday.
The mining difficulty of Bitcoin is adjusted every two weeks (or more precisely, every 2016 blocks) to maintain the normal 10-minute block time. According to Bitinfocharts.com, it has been moving between 8 and 11 minutes since the previous adjustment, standing around 9 minutes yesterday