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Bitcoin Fails to Produce 1 Block for Over an Hour

An 85-minute block interval left more than 13,000 transactions stuck in a pending state on Monday.

Updated May 9, 2023, 3:59 a.m. UTCPublished Oct 17, 2022, 8:47 a.m. UTC

It took more than an hour to mine a block of bitcoin (BTC) on Monday, leaving thousands of transactions stuck in an unconfirmed state.

According to on-chain data from several block explorers, the interval between the two latest blocks mined by Foundry USA and Luxor was 85 minutes.

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According to Mempool, over 13,000 transactions were pending before the latest block was mined.

Last week Bitcoin underwent a difficulty adjustment to ensure block confirmations kept taking place every 10 minutes. With mining difficulty surging to 35.6 trillion it becomes more expensive to mine bitcoin, which heaps pressure on a mining industry that is dealing with soaring energy prices and a crypto bear market.

Tadge Dryja, founder of the Lightning Network, tweeted that an 85-minute interval between blocks can be expected to happen once every 34 days, not taking into account difficulty changes.

UPDATE (Oct. 17, 2022, 13:53 UTC): Adds quote from Lightning Network founder Tadge Dryja.

Bitcoin Mining Blockchain

Oliver Knight

Oliver Knight is the co-leader of CoinDesk data tokens and data team. Before joining CoinDesk in 2022 Oliver spent three years as the chief reporter at Coin Rivet. He first started investing in bitcoin in 2013 and spent a period of his career working at a market making firm in the UK. He does not currently have any crypto holdings.