Glassnode’s data shows the hashrate for Bitcoin has reached a new record high. It has been disputed if hashrate drives price or vice versa. This is due to the shaky association between hashrate and Bitcoin’s price.
Bitcoin’s Hashrate
The hashrate of a bitcoin is a computed value of hashes from bitcoin miners.
The increase in hashrate occurs as some miners struggle to make payments. This is after Bitcoin’s 70% decline from $69k. Additionally, evidence suggests that there might be more capitulation.
A second capitulation could happen if miners sell their Bitcoin. This will occur if the trend of rising hashrate increases without a price increase. A similar circumstance occurred in June when miners traded almost 20,000 BTC.
Hashrate Security
The benefit of a rising hashrate is a decreased risk of a 51% attack on the network. An attacker would require about 1.9 million miners to reach the 313EH/s hashrate.
Given that the cost to mine one bitcoin in 2018 was only $8,000, a 51% attack would have cost only $1.4 billion. As a result of today’s hashrate boost of 900%, the network is now significantly more secure. Even in 2018, 2.4 million top-tier ASIC miners would be required for the attack to be carried out by a malicious actor.
The network has become more secure due to the increase in hashrate. But on the other hand, mining bitcoin now costs more. The amount of BTC created decreases when the hashrate increases because this increases network difficulty.
Bitcoin Miners
Miners get liquidity problems when the price of Bitcoin exceeds the mining cost. Margin calls, cash flow, and other basic operational expenses are a few of the many causes of the problems. To help distressed mining assets, Binance Pool established a $500 million fund.
The investment in Bitcoin mining isn’t slowing down. Numerous mining firms are looking for new investors. Riot started construction on a new 1GW mine. Crusoe Energy bought Great American Mining, and Compass Mining agreed to get a new 27MW mine.
There are New developments in the mining industry. First, it’s the liquid-cooled mining equipment from Fabric Systems. Fabric systems is a mining investment company from Greyscale. Second, Block introduces a new mining unit that will hire the former CTO of Argo.
There is no indication of a long-term adverse sentiment. This is even though the short-term outlook for Bitcoin miners may be dismal.