Bitcoin Hashrate Faces Massive 7.6% Plunge: Price To Follow?

On-chain data shows the Bitcoin Hashrate has observed a sharp drop recently. Here’s what this could mean for the asset’s price.

Bitcoin Mining Hashrate Has Plummeted Since Its Recent High

The “Hashrate” refers to a Bitcoin metric that keeps track of the total amount of computing power that the miners have currently connected to the blockchain. The indicator’s value is traditionally measured in terms of hashes per second (H/s), but today, the network has grown so much that it has to be measured in the much more massive exahashes per second (EH/s).

When the value of this indicator goes up, it means new miners are joining the network and/or existing ones are adding more machines to their farms. Such a trend implies BTC mining is looking a profitable venture to these chain validators.

On the other hand, the metric registering a decline suggests some of the miners are pulling their rigs out of the network, likely because they are no longer able to break even on mining the asset.

Now, here is a chart from Blockchain.com that shows the trend in the 7-day average of the Bitcoin Hashrate over the past year:

Looks like the value of the metric has seen a steep drop in recent days | Source: Blockchain.com

From the graph, it’s visible that the 7-day average of the Bitcoin Hashrate was sitting at a high of about 835.9 EH/s just a few days back, but since then, the metric has witnessed a sharp downtrend, which has taken its value to just 771.8 EH/s.

Following this decline of about 7.6%, the indicator has erased all the gains it had made this month and has returned to the same lows as the ones it had ended January at.

The Hashrate usually doesn’t directly impact the BTC price, but it does provide a reflection of the sentiment that’s present among the miners. This latest rollback in the indicator’s value would suggest the miners are no longer as optimistic about the asset’s outcome as they were earlier in the month, when they took their computing power to a new all-time high.

Interestingly, the decline in the indicator has come even though the Difficulty, a metric built into the Bitcoin network that controls how hard the miners would find it to mine a block, has seen a negative change in the latest adjustment.

Below is a chart from CoinWarz that shows all the changes the BTC Difficulty has gone through during the last six months.

The value of the indicator appears to have gone down during the weekend | Source: CoinWarz

Generally, a reduction in Difficulty is met with expansion from the miners, but it appears the group has so far been doing just the opposite. It now remains to be seen whether the downtrend in the Hashrate is here to stay, or if it would reverse soon enough, implying a switch back to a bullish sentiment among the chain validators.