Bitcoin Has Hit A Historically-Slow Average Block Time

Over the weekend, the average block time on the Bitcoin network hit its highest average since 2009.

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Over the weekend, the trend of falling hash rate on the Bitcoin network that has been observed over the last month accelerated in a historic manner. On Sunday, the average block time exceeded 23 minutes, the highest average block time on a day in over a decade, with the only other occurrences of slower average daily block intervals occuring before bitcoin even had a market price, back in 2009. 

However it should be noted that looking at one-day sample sizes of hash rate and mean block interval times can be misleading, due to the probabilistic nature of bitcoin mining; variance is to be expected. 

Using the trailing seven-days (168-hour moving average), the average time between blocks was 19 minutes and 32 seconds, almost double the 10-minute target interval.

The next miner difficulty adjustment is now estimated to come in at -25.8% on July 2, which would be the largest downwards difficulty adjustment in the history of the Bitcoin network.