The Bitcoin blockchain has been kept running at 180 EH/s by miners who have dedicated SHA256 hashpower. The BTC hashrate hovers just above the 186EH/s zone at the time of writing December 23rd. The latest hashrate highs are in line with BTC’s lifetime high of 194.95 EH/s, December 8, 2021. Metrics indicate that the hashrate has been hovering around that area and 30-day stats show that it has come close to the December 8 high a few times.
BTC is currently doing much better than the records show. The processing power dropped to 69 EH/s on June 28, 2021. The network lost 63.87% due to Chinese mining operations in China. It went from 191 EH/s May 9 to 69 EH/s June. Five months later, hashrate recovered the processing power it lost in that period and has since rebounded. BTC’s price at the end June was lower, trading for $34K per unit.
The difficulty level is expected to drop slightly, Foundry USA holds the top position this week
This week BTC traded at prices between $46.5K and $49.5K. This has helped keep the hashrate strong, even though the network’s mining difficulty rose 8.33% on December 11. The network difficulty could see a decrease in price, as it may be adjusted downwards for the first-time since the November 28 1.49% drop. The difficulty was down 0.2% at the time of writing and will likely drop further in the next 24 hours. This would reduce the current mining difficulty of 24.20 trillion to 24.14 trillion.
Foundry USA, which has 17.17% or 29.82 EH/s of global hashpower, is currently the largest bitcoin ( BTC). Bitmain’s Antpool is the second-largest current miner with 14.78% global hashpower (25.67 EH/s). Viabtc (14.57%), F2pool (12.26%), and Binance Pool (12.17%) are the next three largest miners. The sixth-largest entity by global hashrate, the unknown hashrate/stealth miners commands 12.17%. At the time of writing, the unknown hashrate has approximately 21.14 exahash per sec of hashpower.