The Bitcoin network is going through a zone of turbulence. Its computing power, the hashrate, recorded a brutal drop, the most marked in several years. This major technical setback is attracting the attention of mining specialists and analysts, at a time when the crypto ecosystem is already under increasing pressure. Between market volatility and sluggish mining profitability, the warning signals are piling up, revealing a tense start to the year for players in the sector. This drop in performance calls into question the operational resilience of the network.
In brief
- The Bitcoin network has recorded a historic drop of 12% in its hashrate since November 11, a level not seen since 2021.
- This contraction marks the strongest since the ban on mining in China and triggers concerns about the stability of the network.
- Several indicators confirm the extent of the decline, including a drop in the hash rate, daily revenues at their lowest and a drop in participation from North American farms.
- Extreme weather conditions in the United States have forced many mining companies to shut down their machines, directly impacting overall computing power.
A historic drop in hashrate
A new alert threshold has just been crossed on the Bitcoin network, as the flagship crypto has just left the top 10 global assets. According to data published by CryptoQuant, global hashrate has fallen 12% since November 11reaching its lowest level since October 2021.
This decline in computing power marks the strongest contraction observed since the ban on mining in China, which caused a massive exodus of operators to other jurisdictions.
In detail, several figures illustrate the extent of the phenomenon:
- The hash rate went from over 630 EH/s to around 560 EH/s in less than two months;
- The daily income of mining specialists fell to around $28 million, one of the lowest observed in the last 12 months;
- CryptoQuant's “Miner Profit and Loss Sustainability” indicator shows degraded levels, comparable to those at the end of 2024;
- The rate of participation in the network by large North American mining farms has reportedly fallen due to technical constraints.
This sudden decline can be explained by a set of exogenous factors, notably extreme weather conditions in the United States, which forced certain mining companies to reduce their activity to avoid overloading the electricity networks.
The impact is twofold: both on the production of blocks and on the profitability of operators who, for many, must now reassess their economic model in a context of uncertainty.
A tense operational context
The contraction in the hash rate was largely associated with exceptional weather conditions in the United States, which forced several mining operations to reduce their activity or temporarily take their machines offline, in order to stabilize local power grids and avoid overloads.
This explanation, supported by field data, shows how exogenous factors, here an intense cold spell, can impact the overall computing power of such a vast and decentralized network.
The immediate consequences of this phenomenon are multiple. A drop in hashrate tends to slightly increase block validation times, because less computing power is available to solve the consensus equations. It also puts increased pressure on the profitability of mining companies still in operation, because their fixed costs (mainly energy and infrastructure maintenance) do not decrease in proportion to the decline in the hashrate.
On a more structural level, this type of significant drop in hashrate raises a question of robustness: the more computing power a network loses, the more it potentially becomes vulnerable to attack attempts or consensus manipulation, although bitcoin is historically designed to absorb this type of event. However, a prolonged erosion of computing power can weigh on the confidence of institutional players and investors in the long term.
In the longer term, automatic protocol adjustments, notably mining difficulty, recalibrated every 2,016 blocks, should mitigate some of the negative effects observed, by making it easier to create blocks even with reduced computing power. These adjustments constitute one of the intrinsic mechanisms of resilience of the Bitcoin network, which allow its operation to adapt to cyclical variations in the participation of mining specialists, whose shares continue to stall.
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