Bitcoin mining difficulty climbed to a record high on Monday, a large part of which is attributed to Ethereum’s “Merge” upgrade freeing up more room for Bitcoin miners, according to Bloomberg.
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Fast facts
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Bitcoin mining difficulty, a measure of the amount of work a miner needs to put into verifying blockchain transactions in order to mine Bitcoin, rose by 13.55% in the two weeks leading up to Monday, setting a new high record.
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Experts say the surge in Bitcoin mining can partly be credited to the decline in Ether mining since the Merge update, which took place on Sept. 15, 2022, the Bloomberg report said.
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The Merge saw Ethereum, the world’s second-largest blockchain, transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, cutting its carbon footprint by 99%.
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Proof-of-stake allows users to mine crypto by staking a certain number of tokens, while proof-of-work has miners compete in solving mathematical problems with their computers to dig out cryptocurrencies.
See related article: Scalability is Ethereum’s post-Merge focus: Vitalik Buterin
Read More: finance.yahoo.com