After reaching an all-time high, the hashpower of the Bitcoin network has remained above the 180 exahash/second (EH/s). The hashrate was at its lowest point five months ago, which was 69 EH/s. Since then, it has grown by 163% in the last 178 days or five months.
Bitcoin Hashrate Continues to Run Hot at End of Year Following China’s Crackdown on Bitcoin Mining This Past Summer
The Bitcoin blockchain has been kept running at 180 EH/s by miners who have dedicated SHA256 hashpower. At the time of writing on December 23, BTC’s hashrate is hovering just above the 186 EH/s zone. The recent hashrate highs follow BTC’s lifetime hashrate high tapping 194.95 EH/s on December 8, 2021. The metrics show that the hashrate is hovering around the same region, and the 30-day stats reveal a few instances when it came within a short time of the December 8 high.
BTC’s hashrate is currently doing a whole lot better than records show on June 28, 2021, when the processing power plummeted to 69 EH/s. China’s crackdown on Chinese mining operations caused 63.87% of the network’s hashpower to drop from 191 EH/s in May to 69 at the end June. After five months, hashrate rebounded and has regained processing power that was lost in the same time period. At the end of June, BTC’s price was much lower, swapping for $34K per unit.
It is possible for difficulty to fall slightly. Foundry USA occupies the first position in this week’s top spot
This past week BTC has been trading at prices between $46.5K to $49.5K and this has kept the hashrate running strong — even after the network’s mining difficulty jumped 8.33% higher on December 11. The network difficulty could see an adjustment downward for the first-time since November 28’s 1.49% drop. The difficulty was down 0.2% at the time this article was written. It is likely to fall further in the next 24 hours. The current mining difficulty of 24.20 trillion would be reduced to 24.14 trillion.
Foundry USA, which has 17.17% or 29.82EH/s of global bitcoin mining power at the moment is the world’s largest Bitcoin (BTC) miner. The second-largest miner today is Bitmain’s Antpool with 14.78% of the global hashpower or 25.67 EH/s. Viabtc (14.57%), F2pool (12.26%) and Binance Pool (12.17%) are the next three largest miners. Unknown hashrate or stealth miners command 12.17% of the network’s hashpower and are the sixth-largest entity in terms of global hashrate. At the moment of writing, unknown hashrate has approximately 21.14 exahash/second of hashpower.
What do you think about the current state of the proof-of-work (PoW)-powered Bitcoin network’s hashrate? Please comment below and let us know how you feel about the subject.
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