Bitcoin (BTC) mining hash rate continues to recover; “One of the most profitable industries on the planet”
If you follow the news about the crypto market, you will undoubtedly know of the mining exodus in China during the past months. Practically half of Bitcoin’s computing power went offline in a short time frame. The price collapsed, panic ensued, and things looked grim. But now, the sun is starting to shine again. The hash rate continues to climb, and Bitcoin once again proves its resilience.
Let’s look back at what happened during the past month. First, China decided to chase after bitcoin and crypto miners as they used too much electricity, in the opinion of China’s government. Then, as the clean-up proceeded, more and more Chinese miners turned off their machines and started looking for a new location to host their mining rigs. The result was that the hash rate dropped from an all-time high (ATH) of 180 million terahashes per second (TH/s) to 84 million TH/s in practically less than a month. This is a correction of -53%!
Bitcoin protocol keeps bitcoin safe, even from China
The Bitcoin network makes sure, however, that the network is safe at all times. The difficulty adjustment, about which you can read more in our previous update, adjusted downwards. This made mining bitcoins easier, thus incentivizing other miners to start mining or expand existing operations. In other words, China’s decision to drive out a rapidly growing industry created an extremely attractive business opportunity for miners in other parts of the world.
And it went as expected; new miners joined the network and started mining bitcoin. The 84 million TH/s mentioned before seemed to have been the bottom as the hash rate is now climbing again. We are currently looking at an impressive recovery of over 30% in about a month. This shows that new miners are grabbing their chance and are now mining bitcoins.
Bitcoin mining has become so attractive that Fortune even states that “minting this most unorthodox asset may rank as the most profitable major industry on the planet.” Bitcoin mining is even surpassing industries like Big Pharma and software, as Fortune writes. So even China’s mining ban didn’t harm Bitcoin; it did the exact opposite.