Bitcoin Takes Over An Hour To Mine A Block: Anomaly Or Expected Deviation?

A block on the Bitcoin BTC/USD network took more than an hour to be mined on Thursday, piquing the interest of the cryptocurrency community.

What happened: According to data from Mempool, block 860081 took 73 minutes to get added to Bitcoin's public ledger. 

The block was produced by SECPOOL and showed a time stamp of 11: 44 p.m. EDT. The preceding block 860080, produced by a mining pool from leading Bitcoin mining company, Marathon Digital, had a timestamp of 10:31 p.m. EDT. 

See Also: Bitcoin Miner TeraWulf Leads Early HPC Market Entry, Analyst Projects $610M Revenue By 2026

Why It Matters: As widely known, each block on the network is designed to take 10 minutes on average to get added to the chain. The mining difficulty is adjusted every 2.016 blocks, or roughly two weeks, to ensure block confirmation time remains at 10 minutes

However, instances of longer block confirmations are not uncommon. In November 2023, block 815690 took an hour and nine minutes to be mined. Block 679786 in April 2021 took more than two hours to get added to the blockchain. 

The longest block interval was recorded in October 2011, when block 149098 took 141 minutes before being confirmed. 

Tadge Drjya, the co-inventor of the Lightning Network, Bitcoin's second layer, had earlier weighed in on the delays, noting that an 85-minute gap between blocks is expected to occur every 34 days, assuming no difficulty changes.

A time between blocks of 85 minutes happens every 34 days or so (assuming no difficulty changes, etc)
>>> (1/math.exp(-85/10))/144
34.13033916874399

— Tadge Dryja (@tdryja) October 17, 2022

Price Action: At the time of writing, Bitcoin was exchanging hands at $56,343.52, down 0.93% in the last 24 hours, according to data from Benzinga Pro.

Read Next: 

• Trump Reiterates Plans To Make US World Capital Of Crypto: ‘Instead Of Attacking Industries Of The Future, We’ll Embrace Them’

Photo courtesy: Unsplash