A contributing factor is that some operators are upgrading from older less efficient ASIC models, For many the choice is either power down and liquidate to exit the business, or to upgrade to equipment that can be operated at a profit. When they do upgrade, the new devices pack a higher hashrate for the same physical space. Electricity consumption per-device will be higher but the TH/j is lower than the model being replaced.
It pushes out small miners and leads to consolidation of hash by big players with access to the money spigot, aka US corporations. This didn't really happen before and it is a new challenge to decentralization.
Shouldn't that say increases?
Copy pasta error ... thank you!
Fixed it within the edit window!
:( pain
Stats:
Difficulty:
Here's an article that has some general info about bitcoin mining difficulty.
Network Difficulty, Share Diffiaculty and Hash Functions
https://hashrateindex.com/blog/crypto-mining-network-difficulty-share-difficulty-and-hash-functions
Hashrate:
ASIC Prices:
A great tool to monitor the progress over the 2,016 block epoch is fork.lol's Difficulty Retarget chart:
And some great Dashboards, overall:
https://twitter.com/hashrateindex/status/1579440552189505538 [Nitter]
https://twitter.com/GAMdotAI/status/1579467915698798593 [Nitter]
See also another post, found here on SN, with an article on this from CoinDesk:
Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Surges to ATH, Putting Additional Squeeze on Miners
#79648
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/10/10/bitcoin-mining-difficulty-surges-to-all-time-high-putting-additional-squeeze-on-miners [Archive]
Is it normal for hashrate to rise like this during what is arguably a bear market?
Yes
A contributing factor is that some operators are upgrading from older less efficient ASIC models, For many the choice is either power down and liquidate to exit the business, or to upgrade to equipment that can be operated at a profit. When they do upgrade, the new devices pack a higher hashrate for the same physical space. Electricity consumption per-device will be higher but the TH/j is lower than the model being replaced.
It pushes out small miners and leads to consolidation of hash by big players with access to the money spigot, aka US corporations. This didn't really happen before and it is a new challenge to decentralization.