Bitcoin’s hashrate has dropped significantly from its all-time high as miners are seemingly turning off older mining machines because of the cryptocurrency’s price drop.
According to CryptoCompare data, BTC’s hashrate dropped from an all-time high of 137 million TH/s to around 75 million TH/s at press time, a significant drop of about 45%. The network’s hashrate started dropping shortly after bitcoin’s price failed to surpass the $10,000 mark earlier this year and started dropping.
Source: CryptoCompare
The bitcoin price dropped significantly between March 12 and 13, from a $7,300 high to little under $4,000 before recovering, after the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic and all major U.S. equity indexes entered bear market territory.
At press time, the flagship cryptocurrency is trading at about $6,600 and its market cap is currently of $121 billion. During the March 12-13 sell-off, the crypto market as a whole lost roughly $93 billion as most cryptocurrencies plummeted after BTC started dropping.
The hashrate has been dropping as miners are now likely struggling to make a profit. The cryptocurrency’s hashrate, as seen above, has been steadily rising over the last three years as miners are betting on BTC. Its upcoming halving event, that will see its block rewards drop from 12.5 ₿ to 6.25 ₿ per block, likely also contributed to the hashrate increase, as miners are competing to mint as much bitcoin as possible before its inflation drops.
As a result of the hashrate drop, the mining difficulty on the Bitcoin network recently posted its second-biggest drop in the flagship cryptocurrency’s history. Available data shows the cryptocurrency’s mining difficulty dropped nearly 16%, to 13.91 trillion (T) from 16.55 T.
For comparison in late 2017, when the price of bitcoin hit a new all-time high close to the $20,000 mark, its mining difficulty was 1.87 T.
Featured image via Pixabay.
