That’s what we call a nice recovery. While the average hashrate of the Bitcoin network (BTC) had dropped by half in mid-2021, it reached a new record yesterday. Further proof of the resilience of the world’s largest crypto-currency
Bitcoin network hashrate hits record high
As Bitinfocharts data shows, the average daily hashrate of the Bitcoin network has soared in the first two days of January. It has surpassed its previous record, which was set in May 2021:
Average Bitcoin Hashrate over the year (Source: Bitinfocharts)
On January 2, 2022, the average Bitcoin hashrate exceeded 200 exahashes per second (Eh/s). For comparison, the lowest level reached in 2021 was 68 Eh/s last June. At this point in the year, the crypto-community feared a sustained decline in hashrate as Chinese miners were forced to cease operations in the face of renewed hostility from Beijing.
New records to be set in 2022
So the recovery has been particularly swift, and it shows that more miners are getting into BTC mining, although the price of the largest cryptocurrency has not particularly moved upwards in recent weeks.
This is also notable, considering that the profitability of Bitcoin mining has moved downwards since the beginning of December. This was noted by the analysis service Arcane Research ten days ago:
Bitcoin mining profitability is on the way down after the super-profitable autumn.
The Antminer S19 now has a cash flow per BTC of $39k, down 36% from the $60k peak in November.
From our weekly market report: https://t.co/1BRmx043AV pic.twitter.com/5MFpsbsEff
– Arcane Research (@ArcaneResearch) December 22, 2021
The indicator is therefore rather bullish: it shows that more and more miners are dedicated to the security of the network. In return, the network is becoming more robust. As Jameson Lopp notes, an attacker would now have to spend 2 years mining on the blockchain in order to rewrite it:
BITCOIN POW EQUIVALENT DAYS HITS ALL TIME HIGH!
An attacker with 100% of the current hashrate would have to spend over 2 years mining in order to accumulate enough work to rewrite the entire bitcoin blockchain. pic.twitter.com/4bY9ldlR8H
– Jameson Lopp (@lopp) January 2, 2022
While Bitcoin’s price is struggling to break through the $50,000 mark on a sustained basis, there are indicators that the network is still attracting interest. This is also confirmed by the gradual evolution of the mining difficulty, which is expected to increase again in a few days.
