Bitcoin Hash Rate Drops, Miners Shut Down Their Devices

In our latest Bitcoin news, we find out what is going in with the mining industry and why are miners turning off their devices.

A few weeks ago, the BTC network difficulty dropped by 15 percent and this is considered the second largest drop since 2011 not taking into consideration that one time that bitcoin difficulty dropped by 7 percent which was a hard hit over the past six years.

Some of the crypto analysts believe that this is a sign of bitcoin going on a full death march but despite these believes, the current situation does show how the downturn has influenced the miners by raising the mining costs and lowering the profits immensely.

According to a research done by the BitMEX exchange, the BTC hash rate has already declined by more than 30 percent since November started and that more than 1.3 million mining devices especially Antminer9, have been turned off completely.

The recent sell-off has blown a punch to miners more than it has influenced investors. The overall bitcoin mining revenue declined to $6 million per day just as December started. The total bitcoin mining revenue in November was $13 million which shows the worrying situation miners are in.

One of the reasons for this may be the network difficulty adjusting as pre-set intervals rather than adjusting in real time. For this reason, the hash rate drop will lower down the number of blocks until a new difficulty adjustment happens.

The BitMEX report notes:

 “In the six-day period ending 3rd December, 21.8% fewer blocks than the expected 144 per day were found, as miners left the network before the difficulty adjusted, and as a result, fewer blocks were found. Therefore in the short term, there was a 21.8% fall in mining incentives on top of the impact of the declining price.”

So the conclusion would be that all of the crypto miners are operating at a loss right now, but this should not have a strong impact on Bitcoin itself.