The crypto bear market is far from over, and it seems that bitcoin miners are beginning to feel the pinch as well. Data collected by Coin Dance shows that the hash rate has fallen by almost half since its peak in December 2018.
The total network hashrate has fallen from 60 million terahashes per second (TH/s) at its height in December 2018 down to 27 million TH/s today—a decline of 47 percent.
Data shows the Bitcoin mining bear market has a ways to go.
Despite the fact that bitcoin prices have been on a downward trajectory since December, miners are still losing money. This is because they’re not willing to let go of their equipment in this depressed market, even when it becomes unprofitable for them to mine with it.
In fact, according to data from Bitinfocharts and Blockchain.com, miners are losing more than $1 billion per month on average during this bear market—nearly one-third of what they were making before it started!
Bitcoin Mining Has Great Potential
Miners are shutting down because of the lack of profits that they’ve been seeing since the beginning of 2019.
Miners have stopped mining because it’s not profitable anymore, but there is another reason why this could be good for Bitcoin: cheap energy sources from hydroelectric dams in China. These dams have historically been able to produce relatively cheap and clean power, which helped keep the cost of mining low.
Now that these dams are being shut down due to environmental concerns and government regulations, miners will have to spend more money on their rigs instead of just pay for cheap electricity. This means that miners are probably going to look elsewhere for cheaper power sources or turn off their machines altogether – but either way it will mean less competition for network blocks and therefore better performance for all users involved!
