The Bitcoin hashrate has been dropping since the past month, as people speculated that Chinese miners have been switching off their machines for migration. However, the network hashrate began to recover since November 3, where the hashrate dropped to 106.65 million terahashes per second (TH/s), according to Blockchain.com, the Bitcoin network explorer. This signals that more miners have been activated on the network, possibly the Chinese miners may have ended the seasonal migration.
Bitcoin hashrate surges to 119.8M terahashes
According to the data provided by Blockchain.com, the Bitcoin hashrate grew from the 106 million terahashes in November to the current November 9 record of 119.8 million terahashes. This represents a roughly 12 percent terahashes growth on the network hashrate within the space of six days. Perhaps, the increase in the Bitcoin hashing power will cause an increase in the network’s mining difficulty to balance the block production rate.
Following the increase in Bitcoin hashrate, many industry experts, including Jason Deane, a Quantum Economics analyst, suggested that the Chinese miners are possibly returning to mining. Deane opined that the Sichuan miners are resuming operations somewhere else like Inner Mongolia and Xinjian, which also serve as a mining hub in the country.
Bitcoin mining in China
The province of Sichuan seemingly holds the most mining activities in China. CoinShares had disclosed that Sichuan represented about 54 percent of Bitcoin mining activity around the world. Thus, the Bitcoin hashrate began to free-fall as the miners in the region began to migrate to other regions as the dry season neared. Among other things, the province of Sichuan was favorable to the miners due to its cheap hydroelectric power.
Due to the declining hashrate, the Bitcoin network posted a massive negative mining difficulty adjustment, which was the second-largest ever recorded since the history of Bitcoin.
