While bitcoin prices have been lower than the estimated cost of bitcoin production, the network’s hashrate has dropped a great deal since mid-November. Presently, the total hashrate dedicated to the Bitcoin network is coasting along at 236 exahash per second (EH/s) after dropping below the 200 EH/s range six days ago.
bitcoin hash rate decreased
The first week of November 2022 was brutal for digital currency prices as the collapse of FTX negatively affected the entire industry. Prior to the FTX drop, bitcoin was trading above the $20K region and the network had a total hash rate of around 270 to 290 exahashes per second (EH/s) prior to the explosion.
There was a quick burst of increased hashrate the day after FTX filed for bankruptcy and BTC’s total hashrate tapped an all-time high on Nov. 12, 2022. At block height 762,845, bitcoin miners managed to get the hashrate to briefly rise to a whopping 347.16 EH/s. Since then, the hashrate has divebombed and slid below the 200 EH/s range on Nov. 26.
Currently, bitcoin miners have managed to rise above the 200 EH/s region, up to the current 236 EH/s recorded on December 2, 2022 at 10:15 AM (ET). The drop in hash rate indicates that unprofitable mining units are forced to shut down machines, while only strong operators survive.
At the time of writing, the estimated cost of bitcoin production ($16,956) is awfully close to the leading crypto asset’s spot market value ($16,897). Previously, the cost of bitcoin production was $18,313 on Nov. 30, which was significantly higher than BTC’s spot market value. With a drop in BTC production costs, it makes it easier for current operators to survive.
Bitcoin miners are also expecting a major mining difficulty reduction of between 6.56% and 7.9% compared to today’s difficulty rating on or around December 5, 2022. Currently, the projected mining difficulty reduction is likely to be the largest difficulty the network will see in 2022. From November 30 to December 2, 2022, approximately 80 exahash of hashpower has been removed from the total hash rate of the network.
