Bitcoin difficulty drops by over 11%, in steepest drop since 2021 China ban

The Bitcoin web mining difficulty, a metric tracking the comparative situation of adding caller blocks to the Bitcoin (BTC) ledger, fell by astir 11.16% successful the past 24 hours, the worst driblet successful a azygous accommodation play since China’s 2021 prohibition connected crypto mining.

Bitcoin mining trouble is astatine 125.86 T and took effect astatine artifact 935,429, information from CoinWarz shows. The average artifact time is implicit 11 minutes, overshooting the 10-minute target.

Difficulty is projected to autumn again successful the adjacent accommodation connected February 23 by astir 10.4% to 112.7 T, according to CoinWarz.

The Bitcoin web mining trouble from 2014 to 2026. Source: CoinWarz

China announced a prohibition connected crypto mining and began enforcing a crackdown connected integer assets successful May 2021, resulting successful respective downward trouble adjustments betwixt May and July 2021, ranging from 12.6% to 27.9%, according to historical information from CoinWarz. 

The steep downward accommodation came amid a broad crypto marketplace downturn, which crashed the terms of Bitcoin by implicit 50% from the all-time precocious of implicit $125,000 to a low of $60,000, and a wintertime tempest successful the US that caused impermanent miner downtime. 

Related: Bitcoin's 'miner exodus' could propulsion BTC terms beneath $60K

Winter Storm Fern sweeps done the US and curtails miner hashrate

A terrible wintertime tempest swept done the United States successful January, impacting 34 states crossed 2,000 quadrate miles with snow, crystal and freezing temperatures that disrupted electrical infrastructure.

Large areas of the United States experienced powerfulness outages and work disruptions during wintertime tempest Fern. Source: AccuWeather

The disruption to the powerfulness grid caused US-based Bitcoin miners to temporarily curtail their vigor usage and halt operations, reducing the full web hashrate, the magnitude of computational powerfulness expended by miners to secure the Bitcoin protocol.

Foundry USA, a US-based mining excavation and the biggest mining excavation by hashrate successful the world, concisely lost astir 60% of its hashing power amid wintertime tempest Fern.

The mining pool’s full hashing powerfulness declined from astir 400 exahashes per 2nd (EH/s) to astir 198 EH/s successful effect to the storm. 

The marketplace stock of Bitcoin mining pools. Source: Hashrate Index

Foundry USA’s hashrate recovered to implicit 354 EH/s, the mining pool’s hashing powerfulness astatine the clip of this writing, and it inactive commands 29.47% of the marketplace share, according to Hashrate Index.

However, the full Bitcoin web hashrate declined to a four-month low successful January amid deteriorating crypto marketplace conditions and miners shifting operations to AI information centers and different forms of high-performance computing.

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