Quote from: philipma1957 on Today at 12:23:00 PM

Well he is a newbie.

We have had a 50% hashrate drop back in 2021 when BTC was whaling and China kicked the miners out.

That killed of the April 2021 prices of 60k plus.

Quote

https://newhedge.io/terminal/bitcoin/difficulty-estimator

Latest Block:   843559 (12 minutes ago)

Current Pace:   99.9052% (872 / 872.83 expected, 0.83 behind)

Previous Difficulty:   88104191118793.16
Current Difficulty:   83148355189239.77
Next Difficulty:   between 83133345743319 and 83138178361635
Next Difficulty Change:   between -0.0181% and -0.0122%
Previous Retarget:   last Thursday at 6:53 AM (-5.6250%)
Next Retarget (earliest):   May 23, 2024 at 7:06 AM (in 7d 22h 44m 41s)
Next Retarget (latest):   May 23, 2024 at 7:12 AM (in 7d 22h 50m 51s)
Projected Epoch Length:   between 14d 0h 12m 58s and 14d 0h 19m 7s

we are on track to drop again

Mining difficulty will most likely increase but so will mining technology. Moores Law comes into play on both sides of the equation in that as difficulty increases so will mining efficency. Many mining chip manufactures are addressing the issue. While it is no longer profitable to mine bitcoin on your laptop, one can mine alt-coins effectively and convert to bitcoin.

Market forces and competition always seem to sort these issues out.