After freezing weather had put a strain on the USA’s electricity grid and led to a temporary drop in hash rate, the Bitcoin Hashrate dropped by 38% to 170.60 EH/s around Christmas. Post tragic downfall, the Bitcoin hashrate now starts returning to its normal, which lies between 225 – 300 EH/s. Here EH/s refers to Exhashes per second.
Bitcoin’s hashrate is calculated by taking into account the number of hashes produced by Bitcoin miners to solve the next block. This is regarded as a key metric in assessing the security of the Bitcoin network.
The days leading up to Christmas and bone–chilling temperatures across the United States lead to millions without power. The reports provide that Bitcoin miners in Texas who are associated with a significant portion of the country’s hashrate willingly curtailed operations to return power to the grid for households to remain heated.
According to the reports of the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, the USA alone accounts for 37.84% of the average monthly hashrate share globally. The top four states Bitcoin mining states in the country are New York, Georgia, Texas, and Kentucky which experienced power outages and winter storms.
Alongside, the event of freezing shutdown of miners in the USA prompted a controversial statement from FutureBit founder who claimed that the fall in hashrate is the result of a growing number of centralized mines in Texas. He claims that if hashrates are distributed evenly to millions of small miners rather than a few dozen massive mines, then it would not lead reoccurrence of any such phenomenon.
However, these tragic weather events have not impacted the price of Bitcoin (BTC) which is currently priced at $16,826 and only a slight fall of 0.27% was observed in a day.
