Bitcoin Hashrate down 45% – Miners witness the second largest difficulty drop in history

Bitcoin’s hashrate plunged 45% from the record highs it saw on February 29. The hashrate hit an all-time high of 136 exahash per second (EH / s) but has since dropped to 75 EH / s. Additionally, the crypto network has seen the second largest difficulty drop since October 2011.

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Bitcoin’s hashrate drops 45% from an all-time high

The latest cryptocurrency price change capitulated to a series of small mining operations and BTC’s overall hashrate dropped 45% in 30 days. The drop in prices resulted from the looming economic crisis that scares the whole world and BTC is hovering between $ 6,600-6,850 per coin. On February 29, the network’s hashrate rose to its highest level ever, reaching 136 EH / s. But in the past 30 days and especially after the infamous “Black Thursday” of March 12, BTC’s hashrate has dropped to a low of 75 EH / s. Statistics show that miners paying over $ 0.05 per kilowatt hour (kWh) aren’t seeing the best profits. Of course, this has led to some operations closing miners, as they hope to re-enter when the price improves.

Second biggest drop in BTC difficulty

Miners ditching the system and hashrate down 45% caused the second largest decline in BTC network difficulty since 2011. Basically, network difficulty is a measure of how hard it is to find hash under a target specified. The drop was about 15.5% after the difficulty went from 16.5 trillion to 13.9 trillion on Thursday. The difficulty of BTC is based on an interval of two weeks or 2,016 blocks, but is also greatly affected when a large number of mining operations stop mining.

The last times BTC has seen such a drastic drop in difficulty were in December 2018 (15%) and October 2011 (around 18%). The drop in prices recorded by BTC last week was the worst in years and was not good for miners hoping for a bull run. Meanwhile, with the difficulty so low, some crypto watchers have noticed many more miners bouncing back and forth between the BCH and BTC networks. Both blockchains will see a reduction in block reward over the next month and a half, as BCH will halve in 12 days around April 8 or April 8. BTC will see its block subsidy cut by half around 48 days from now on or around May 13th.

What do you think of the decline in BTC hashrate and the collapse of the network difficulty? Let us know in the comments section below.

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