Over the past two weeks, bitcoin’s average hashrate has fallen 14% from its all-time high in mid-November.
This is revealed by the Hashrate Index, which says the weekly average dropped from 274 EH/s on November 12 to 236 EH/s yesterday.
Bitcoin’s hashrate is dropping like a rock↘️
Bitcoin’s 7-day average hashrate is currently 236 EH/s, down 14% from its ATH of 274 EH/s👀
Block times are slow as a result: 11 minutes and 12 seconds on average during this period🐌https://t.co/JN7OmpJ8X0 pic.twitter.com/ckxqEqOGqX
— Hashrate Index (@hashrateindex) November 28, 2022
Bitcoin hashrate calculation
These data are not exact readings, but estimates based on several factors including difficulty and block time. Therefore, different sources have different information.
In the case of the Hashrate Index, these are weekly averages and averages of daily hashrate estimates for the previous seven days.
For example, according to bitinfocharts.comthe daily average for yesterday was 244 Eh/s, which is higher than the 236 Eh/s estimated by the Hashrate Index for the daily average of the last seven days.
On the other hand, according to bitinfocharts.com, the daily average dropped to 204 Eh/s the day before yesterday, so the daily average of the last seven days does not deviate much from the Hashrate Index.
Indeed, the latter is probably more suitable for analyzing medium-term hashrate trends, as daily averages vary considerably, while weekly averages vary less.
Instead, according to CoinWarzit touched a high hourly peak of almost 290 Eh/s today and a low hourly peak of 195 Eh/s three days ago.
What is certain is that the absolute all-time high was reached on Saturday, November 12, when the daily average approached 300 Eh/s for the first time in history, and the hourly average even rose above 340 Eh/s.
Bitcoin hashrate trend in recent weeks
In order to correctly plot the decline of the last two weeks, you need to look at the previous weeks.
At the end of October, the seven-day daily average was about 260 Eh/s, then already increased to 274 in early November. It remained high until it peaked on November 12th, a few days after BTC’s value dropped. FTX bankruptcy.
On November 20th, there was a small increase in difficulty, which made Bitcoin mining a little less profitable, and with its market value falling, some miners apparently started shutting down some machines.
Next change at this point difficultyscheduled for early December, may be lower.
No problem for Bitcoin
So far, no operational problems have arisen for these dynamics Bitcoin.
In fact, block-time, the average time it takes to mine a block, has remained at about 10 minutes, although it has consistently exceeded that limit since November 21st.
For this reason, it is highly likely that the next difficulty adjustment will be downward to bring the block time back closer to 10 minutes.
On the contrary, thanks to the high hashrate in the past weeks, it was almost always below this limit, with a minimum peak of less than 8 minutes in early October. The highest peak in recent days was over 13 minutes on November 26, which is the lowest peak in recent weeks.
It should be noted that although there are no problems in the functioning of Bitcoin, some problems are experienced by miners.
In fact, since BTC prices are so low, they make very little money to cover all their expenses. Estimated profitability BTC mining It peaked at just $0.0525 per THash/s per day on November 14th.
In such a situation, if the price of Bitcoin continues to be this low, it is fair to expect that miners will be forced to shut down more and more machines, further lowering the hashrate.
In that case, there should be no problem for Bitcoin, provided the difficulty drops at the same rate. The fact is that while the difficulty decrease is inevitable as the hashrate decreases, difficulty adjustments only happen every two weeks, so if the BTC price drops further in the days immediately following the next adjustment, it could be a problem for miners.
In this case, the block time may remain longer than 10 minutes for several days until the new difficulty adjustment.
miners
Not surprisingly, there are a number of Bitcoin industry mining companies currently facing difficulties.
If such low prices for BTC continue, in some cases these challenges may be unsustainable and may force some of these companies to close.
However, even if this happens, the difficulty adjustment will keep the Bitcoin protocol running properly, although there may be some delay in validating blocks before the next adjustment.