The Bitcoin hashrate has seen its most dramatic fall of the last three years between June 15 and Tuesday, according to data from Blockchain.com.
Bitcoin hashrate decreased by almost 943.6 billion terahashs per second (Th / s) from June 15 to 799.9 TH / S Tuesday, a drop of more than 15%.
The net drop has fueled speculations on possible geopolitical and environmental causes.
Although the reason for the sudden slowdown is not yet confirmed, many in the cryptocurrency community point to Iran as a cause.
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Presumed Iran
Iran is known to organize large -scale bitcoin extraction operations in the country. The National Council for the Resistance of Iran reported at the end of May that major cryptocurrency extraction operations managed or protected by the actors of the Iranian State, in particular the body of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, are partly responsible for local power offices.
Although this makes a plausible Iranian connection, a more in -depth examination raises doubts about theory. On Friday, the Iranian government imposed an almost total used breakdown to protect itself from cyber attacks, Techcrunch reported.
This coincided with the fact that the world hashrate fell from 884.6 million Th / s Thursday at 865 TH / S on Friday. This represented a drop of 2.2%.
This was followed by an American strike on Iranian nuclear installations on Sunday, which, according to Reuters, also led to power network failures. This coincided with a drop of 1% global hashrate of 869.9 TH / S Saturday at 860.9 Th / s on Sunday.
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The connection is low
Only just over 3% of the total decrease in Hashrate has precisely coincided with recent events in Iran. In addition, the hashrate fell by more than 6.25% from June 15 to Thursday, before Iran was bombed by the United States or was imposed on an used breakdown on the Internet.
These data show that the hashrate was already on a sharp drop before events, and the fall in progress is simply a continuation of a trend that could be exacerbated by events in Iran.
Other factors that probably play a role are the rise in electricity prices and the current heat wave in the United States. The heat wave leads to lower mining efficiency, which could encourage to stop mining installations for low profit.
Heat waves also lead to an increase in electricity demand and higher power prices, which further reduces the profitability of Bitcoin. The New York -based public service, Con Edison, recently asked customers to keep energy during the current heat wave, which has increased electricity prices in certain regions to their highest level since January.
However, the hashrate of the Bitcoin network is not directly measured. It is rather calculated according to the block time and the current extraction difficulty.
This is possible because the mining difficulty provides information on the amount of computer power, on average, is necessary to find a valid block. Since the requirement for calculation is an average and real exploitation has significant variations based on pure chance, this calculation of the hashrate is imprecise.
Iran’s theory cannot be rejected, although some market observers suggest that a combination of geopolitical, environmental and economic pressures is at stake.
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