Bitcoin's mining difficulty has hit a new all-time high of 142.3 trillion, marking a 29.6% increase since the beginning of the year. Mining difficulty is an average measure of how many hash functions miners need to calculate to mine one block, with a rising figure indicating that mining is becoming more computationally intensive. Difficulty is recalibrated every 2,0116 blocks in order to ensure a ten-minute block time, adapting to any increases (or decreases) in the Bitcoin network’s hash power. (full story)