Bitcoin miners can’t stop, and they won’t. The Bitcoin (BTC) hash rate continues to climb to new highs, despite the sharp price drop.
Bitcoin mining hash rate peaked at 258 exahashes per second (EH/s) on October 4, according to Brains Insights, a mining data tool and metrics company. Although the bitcoin price is down 58% year-to-date against the US dollar, the mining hash rate is up 43%.
Last 3 months Hashrate. Source: minds.
Bitcoin Gandalf from Braiins’ Marketing Team told Cointelegraph that “the hash rate reaching another all-time high shows that miners are bullish on the future prospects for Bitcoin.” However, the current macroeconomic environment can pose a problem, as “the present is not so rosy for bitcoin miners,” Gandalf said, adding:
“Bitcoin continues to trade in this tight range between $19,000 and $20,000, and this latest hash rate increase will lead to a sharp upward adjustment in mining difficulty, which means miners’ margins will shrink even further.”
In a series of tweets, mining engineers and hobbyists shared their thoughts on the hash rate hitting an all-time high while the price is still low. Rob W. of Bitcoin Upstream Data miner summed up the sentiment:
Market analyst Zach Foyle explained that the increased hash rate may be the result of XPs “going online”. S19 XP Antminer is the latest model from Bitmain, one of the world’s most popular bitcoin mining hardware providers.
The number of hashes produced in one second is often referred to as the hash rate. In Bitcoin talk, the hash rate is an important security metric, as well as one that many BTC miners monitor.
Simply put, the more hashes – or computing power – the network puts out, the more secure the overall Bitcoin. As a result, Bitcoin is more resistant to attacks, the most popular being the 51% attack.
Currently, more and more miners are coming online trying to solve blocks to receive the Bitcoin block reward, which is currently 6.25 BTC, or about $120,000. Blocks are resolved and added to the Bitcoin blockchain on average every 10 minutes.
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The difficulty adjustment determines the speed at which blocks are resolved. It fluctuates approximately every two weeks and is expected to increase on October 10 based on the increased hash rate. The difficulty adjustment was on a steady rally upward in 2022 – which means blocks are harder to solve on average – after first dropping in March 2022.
In short, even though the bitcoin price continues to drop below $20,000, more and more miners are finding value in supporting the network. James Cheek, an analyst at Glassnode, explained in a tweet: “With the hash rate at all-time highs once again, despite all the promises to the contrary, it looks like #Bitcoin is not dead yet.”
