What Is Mining Difficulty?
Mining difficulty is a measure of how difficult it is to find a hash below a given target. The Bitcoin network has a global block difficulty that adjusts every 2016 blocks (roughly 2 weeks) based on the time it took to find the previous 2016 blocks. This means that as more miners join and attempt to solve puzzles, the difficulty will increase in order to keep mining times consistent.
The higher the mining difficulty, the harder it becomes for miners to generate new bitcoins by solving complex mathematical problems with their computing power. As such, when there are fewer miners competing for rewards, or when hardware efficiency increases suddenly due to technological advances, mining difficulty decreases accordingly so that production does not outpace demand. In other words, this metric helps ensure that supply remains steady despite changes in market conditions or technology advancements.