Bitcoin's Total Hashrate Slides Lower in December as BTC Miners Struggle for Profits

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’s Hashrate Slips Lower

The first week of November 2022 was brutal for digital currency prices as FTX’s collapse rippled across the entire industry in a negative fashion. Prior to the FTX fallout, bitcoin was trading above the $20K zone and the network’s total hashrate was coasting along at roughly 270 to 290 exahash per second (EH/s) before the blowout.

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.

Presently, bitcoin miners have managed to rise above the 200 EH/s region, to the current 236 EH/s recorded at 10:15 a.m. (ET) on Dec. 2, 2022. The drop in hashrate indicates that unprofitable mining entities have been forced to shut down machines, while only the 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 large mining difficulty reduction between 6.56% to 7.9% lower than today’s difficulty rating on or around Dec. 5, 2022. Presently, the estimated mining difficulty reduction could be the largest difficulty drop the network has seen in 2022. Since Nov. 30, up until Dec. 2, 2022, roughly 80 exahash of hashpower has been removed from the network’s total hashrate.

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What do you think about the current state of Bitcoin’s hashrate? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Jamie Redman

Jamie Redman is the News Lead at Bitcoin.com News and a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open-source code, and decentralized applications. Since September 2015, Redman has written more than 6,000 articles for Bitcoin.com News about the disruptive protocols emerging today.

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