- The Bitcoin hashrate has dropped 36% following the halving
- This drop is the result of some miners turning off unprofitable machines
- The rate will return as other miners pick up the slack
The Bitcoin hashrate has taken an anticipated dive following the halving as unprofitable miners turn off their machines. The hashrate, which has dropped from a pre-halving peak of 137 million terahashes per second (TH/s) to just under 87 million TH/s was expected however and is nothing to worry about, despite the efforts of the anti-Bitcoin brigade to suggest that the drop in Bitcoin hashrate suddenly makes it insecure.
Source: BitInfoCharts
Hashrate Drop is Natural Post-halving
The 36% drop in the Bitcoin hashrate has occurred because the halving which took place on Monday. With the reward for mining a Bitcoin block now halved yet the costs of mining remaining the same, mining farms who use older and less efficient equipment are suddenly operating at a loss. This gives them little choice but to turn off their mining equipment, causing the resultant drop in hashrate.
The fact that the Bitcoin hashrate has dropped is nothing to be concerned about however, because any slack left by miners dropping out will soon be recovered by the other miners in the space. While we don’t know how low the hashrate will drop, we do know that it is nothing to be concerned about – the Bitcoin hashrate is known to fluctuate just like the Bitcoin price, and in fact the hashrate was lower than it is now just seven weeks ago before jumping to an all-time high.
Not Everyone Gets It
Despite almost the entire crypto community acknowledging why the hashrate is dropping and also that it will stabilize and recover in the near future, there are still those who try to claim that the end is near:
This is has always been my concern with BTC in the long term. After each halving it becomes more centralised and prone to a 51% attack. I traded my BTC for XRP which IMO has a brighter future.
— Daniel Fraser (@Daniel_Fraser1) April 12, 2020
Anti-Bitcoiners love to use this rationale to suggest that Bitcoin is now suddenly a danger to itself after the halving, taking the opportunity to shill their coin of choice instead as being more secure. This ignores the fact that it would take an unprecedented hashrate drop for anyone to even consider performing such a feat, and with new mining farms setting up shop all round the world and existing mining companies such as Argo Blockchain massively increasing their exposure, it is almost impossible for it to drop this low.
If someone wanted to try and 51% the Bitcoin network at the moment it would cost them $387,500 per hour, and all they would achieve is crashing the price of the Bitcoin they are generating by taking such action.
So no, the Bitcoin network is not suddenly susceptible to attack, no matter what some might tell you.
