Bitcoin’s hashrate has been climbing higher during the last two weeks, hitting 174 exahash per second (EH/s) on two occasions since June 28. Currently, Bitcoin’s network hashrate is coasting along at 158 EH/s, up 128% since the low 83 days ago when it hit 69 EH/s. Meanwhile, unknown hashrate has subsided a great deal as 96% of the mystery miners recorded at the end of June have disappeared.
Bitcoin Hashrate Gathers Strength Since the End of June
Approximately 83 days or over two months ago, Bitcoin’s hashrate had slid to a low of 69 exahash per second (EH/s) on June 28. The slide was initiated by the crackdown in China against Chinese mining operations and a great majority of facilities were forced to relocate.
Even well before the Chinese government’s crackdown, Chinese miners were already relocating and the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI) project’s research indicated that by April 2021, China’s hashrate dominance was down to 46%.
Since June 28, Bitcoin’s hashrate has increased a great deal, climbing 128% during the last 83 days. On two occasions, the hashrate jumped to 174 EH/s on August 23, and to 173.7 EH/s on September 14. At the time of writing, the hashrate is around 158 EH/s and has been maintaining above the 125 EH/s zone for the last two weeks.
A number of other hashrates, stemming from various mineable blockchains, have also risen dramatically. Ethereum’s overall hashrate was down to 504 terahash per second (TH/s) over two months ago and today it is 740 TH/s. Ethereum’s hashrate has increased roughly 46.82% since June 25, 2021.
Bitcoin Difficulty Expected to Rise Again, Unknown Hashrate Exits the Network
Bitcoin (BTC) is also expecting an increase in difficulty again after four consecutive increases in mining difficulty since block height 693,504. BTC’s network hashrate jumped every two weeks with increases of 6.03%, 7.31%, 13.24%, and 4.54% as of block height 699,552.
Metrics show the current difficulty is 18.42 trillion and in less than two days, an increase is expected to happen. At current hashrate speeds, the change is estimated to be around 3.52% higher than today at 19.06 trillion.
BTC is becoming more difficult to mine and at 19.06 trillion it is slowly approaching the difficulty seen prior to June 13, 2021. Prior to this date, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty was above the 20 trillion zone and was far more difficult to find blocks since January 9, 2021 at block height 665,280.
Before BTC block height 665,280, the mining difficulty was 18.6 trillion or lower. Today, the top three mining pools dedicating hashrate to the BTC chain include F2pool with 26.06 EH/s, Antpool with 22.68 EH/s, and Poolin with 21.46 EH/s. Interestingly, unknown hashrate or stealth miners have subsided to 306.55 petahash per second (PH/s) or 0.22% of the network.
For some contrast, on June 22, 2021, unknown hashrate captured around 10 EH/s of Bitcoin hashpower at that time and over 12% of the global SHA256 hashrate. The metrics show that the 10,000 PH/s drop to 306.55 PH/s means 96.93% of the stealth hashrate has mostly disappeared over the course of 89 days.
What do you think about the steady Bitcoin hashrate increase during the last few months? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.
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