Bitcoin rallies after largest-ever downward difficulty adjustment

peshkov/iStock via Getty Images To review, China in June launched attempted to end Bitcoin (BTC-USD), with a well-coordinated effort that shut down nearly all bitcoin miners in the country. As the miners unplugged, the hash rate plunged, helping to crash the price of bitcoin from nearly $43K to below $29K in a few days time late in the month. Bitcoin was designed for new blocks to be added to the blockchain roughly every ten minutes, but with far fewer miners at work, block times rose to more than 20 minutes at one point in late June. That brings to the front another brilliant, but less discussed aspect of Satoshi's creation - the difficulty adjustment. Every 2,016 blocks (about every two weeks), Bitcoin's algorithm automatically adjusts upward/downward the difficulty of completing the equations that result in new blocks being mined (and bitcoin being rewarded) so that block time returns to about