Difficulty: 25998, Total network hashing: 186 Ghash/sec
Earlier today the difficulty threshold for generating bitcoins went from 22012 to 25998. The difficulty readjusts every 2,016 blocks and today this happened at block 106,848.
This puts the hashing strength of the entire Bitcoin network at roughly 186 Ghash/second. Higher hashing strength for the network results in a lower likelihood of a block being solved by a miner’s computing hardware.
It appeared that difficulty adjustments were starting to slow as the network grew, however the increase at the last difficulty adjustment was just under 20% and this increase represents another 18% increase over the level nearly 12 days prior.
One factor contributing to the growth is Bitcoin Pooled Mining (BPM) which now accounts for over 32 Ghash/s.
Going forward, the following developments will likely keep increases like this continuing:
BitcoinRigs.com prepares to sell turnkey mining rigs. Forum post.
Atlas is selling Tiny Miners
jgarzik is preparing a new mining pool