Currently, the hashrate stands at 527 EH/s, exceeding half a zettahash per second (Zx/s) and equivalent to 527 quintillion hashes per second. Over the past 90 days, the average hashrate fluctuated around 462 EH/s, with the latest 2016 blocks showing an average of 496.8 EH/s.

Luxor’s data also indicates that the three-day SMA (simple moving average) of the hashrate peaked at 539 EH/s. As block time currently fluctuates between 8 minutes 47 seconds and 9 minutes 31 seconds, processing occurs faster than the standard 10-minute average.

This increase in hashrate contributes to reducing block intervals and is likely to lead to a mining difficulty increase from 3.11% to 5.2%. The next Bitcoin difficulty adjustment is scheduled for December 23, 2023.

Presently, approximately 49 mining pools contribute to the BTC network, with Foundry USA leading over the past three days, surpassing Antpool. Foundry USA boasts 164.24 EH/s, constituting 31.76% of the total hashrate. Meanwhile, Antpool has 126.51 EH/s, or 24.46% of the overall share. Together, both pools controlled over 56.22% of Bitcoin’s total hashrate as of December 20, 2023.

In December of this year, Bitcoin miners have already surpassed previous records in annual fee income.

In November, Bitcoin transaction fees brought miners a record $142 million, but in December, they have already collected $202 million. Furthermore, the total income this month from block rewards and transfer fees has reached $953 million. High-priority transaction fees still exceed $15.

Currently, there are over 300,000 pending transactions in the mempool. Processing unconfirmed transactions requires a total of 359 blocks.