Bitcoin Price Down, But Hashrate Sets New All-Time High

Bitcoin miners have taken the 7-day average Hashrate to a new all-time high (ATH), despite the fact that the token’s price has been down recently.

Bitcoin Hashrate Has Just Set A New Record

The Bitcoin “Hashrate” refers to the collective amount of computing power that the miners as a whole have connected to the blockchain. Miners use their computing resources to compete against each other, so this power never actually works as a collective, but the Hashrate is nonetheless a useful metric as it provides insight into the sentiment among the chain validators.

When the value of the metric rises, it means new miners are joining the network and/or existing ones are expanding their facilities. Such a trend implies BTC mining is looking lucrative to this group.

On the other hand, the indicator observing a decline suggests some of the miners have decided to disconnect their machines from the blockchain, a potential sign that profitability is going down.

Now, here is a chart from Blockchain.com that shows how the 7-day average value of the Bitcoin Hashrate has changed during the past year:

As displayed in the above graph, the 7-day average Bitcoin Hashrate fell to a low of 889 exahashes per second (EH/s) on August 3rd, but since then, the metric has seen a sharp jump that has taken its value to 952.5 EH/s. The low in the metric coincided with the price plunge to $112,000 for the asset. This trend wasn’t anything unusual, as miner revenue is correlated to the cryptocurrency’s value.

Miners earn the major part of their income through the block subsidy, which is denominated in BTC. Moves up and down in the coin’s exchange rate, therefore, directly impact the USD value of their rewards.

Interestingly, the rebound in the Hashrate to the new ATH has come despite the fact that Bitcoin has been unable to make a recovery from its earlier price plunge. Miners sometimes expand in anticipation of future action, so the new power that has just come into the network could be a sign that miners are hoping bullish winds will return for BTC. Only time will tell, though, whether this bet will work out.

The latest jump in the 7-day average Bitcoin Hashrate has meant that its value has broken the previous record of 943.6 EH/s set back in June. A consequence of this ATH in miners’ computing power is that the Difficulty is also set to see an adjustment to a new high.

The “Difficulty” is a feature on the BTC blockchain that controls how hard miners would find it to perform their duty. It exists to limit how fast miners can solve blocks and earn the block reward.

Increases in Hashrate speed up the miners, so the network responds by upping its Difficulty just enough to bring them back to the standard pace. The next automatic network adjustment is estimated to occur on Friday and will take the metric’s value to a new ATH of 129.13 terahashes, according to data from CoinWarz.

BTC Price

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $116,300, up more than 2% over the last 24 hours.