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The network continues to run fine with each block, but the average hash rate has taken a decent hit over the past month, falling 17.4% from a recent all-time high. A lot of hashes are leaving the network we are seeing because 1) the hash rate after the low bitcoin price because older machines become unprofitable on the margin and 2) the impact of the recent heatwave in the United States and cuts across Texas in particular . As energy demand increases during the summer months and electricity prices rise, we can expect industry-scale miners to lock down the hash rate according to their electricity protocols for a period of time.
There has only been a few times in the history of bitcoin that we have seen such a drop in hash rate. Yet this year it is still up 13.93%, while the price of bitcoin is down 56%.
As a result, the difficulty adjustment was the largest downward correction (5.1%) since the Chinese mining ban, the third consecutive downward adjustment, and the fourth of the last five two-week (technically: 2016 blocks) epochs. This is a welcome sign for the profitability of miners who can stay online. With adjustments and a price rally from recent lows, hashrate price has recovered more than $0.10 (at least for now) from 48% of its lows.
Some of the largest public bitcoin miners have estimates of marginal bitcoin production costs in the range of around $6,000 to $10,000, mostly attributable to the cost of electricity. Since they run some of the most efficient, new-generation hardware on the market, the estimated production and net power costs are very high for the total network. created by Charles Edwards, the total network estimates that the cost of bitcoin electricity is around $16,000 right now. It is rare to see bitcoin fall below this rising electricity cost estimate throughout its history, but it has happened before.