Seasonal pressure, post-halving effect, and machine shutdowns lead the hashrate to drop, favoring miners with lower costs.
Bitcoin's mining difficulty, which determines the computational power required to mine blocks, could see the largest drop in the last four years after a reduction of about 30% in two weeks.
After the recent decline, the hashrate is now just below 700 EH/s, according to data from Glassnode. The drop in Bitcoin's hashrate triggers a projected difficulty adjustment of 9%, providing miners with temporary relief amid seasonal and post-halving pressure, CoinDesk commented.
The difficulty adjusts every 2,016 blocks — about two weeks — to ensure that blocks continue to be mined at approximately 10-minute intervals.
Data from Mempool.space indicates that this would be the highest level since the ban on cryptocurrency mining in China four years ago.
As the publication reminded, when China banned cryptocurrency mining activities in 2021, at a time when Bitcoin was priced around $30,000, the rate plummeted by 50%, to 58 exahashes per second (EH/s).
Another point addressed is that significant corrections in hashrate and difficulty are not uncommon during the summer in the northern hemisphere.
High electricity prices, driven by increased demand for air conditioning and overloaded power grids, often lead miners to temporarily shut down their machines, especially older or less efficient ones. This seasonal pattern has been observed in several previous years.
The anticipated drop in Bitcoin mining difficulty is expected to relieve pressure on miners, making the activity more profitable. With easier mining, miners can generate more revenue with the same computational power.
If the price of Bitcoin and transaction fees remain stable or rise, the gain per exahash (currently at $51.9) should also increase in the coming days.