Every 2016 blocks, bitcoin protocol's difficulty adjusts which determines how much computing power miners need to use to solve the subsequent set of blocks.
And today the difficulty which was 163,491,654,909 dropped 5,064,451,142, or 3.1%, to 158,427,203,767.
Is the market reacting to this at all? It's correlating with a bearflag as we have had price falling:
If anything, the price decline would hurt the difficulty, not the other way around, as the fiat value of the block reward declines, then miners are less likely to throw computing power at the network to chase it. Similarly, as we have doubled in price from the last 6 months in Bitcoin, the difficulty has risen, as the miners are chasing a higher fiat block reward value:
If price continues to fall, it could lead to more pressure on miners and reduced computing power thrown at the network and continued drop in difficulty
see web version here: http://www.bitcoinfuturesguide.com/bitc ... stabilizes
