Texas bitcoin miners power off – hashrate decreased by 35%

After several miners in the United States disconnected from the Bitcoin mining process over the past 24 hours, the hashrate in total fell by 35%. The reason for emergency outages were winter storms in the country.

At the end of yesterday there was a big drawdown to 156 EH/s. To understand how tangible the result is, we note that 2 weeks before the incident, the average bitcoin mining rate was 237 EH/s. Winter storms in the US have thwarted many people's plans, causing thousands of flights to be cancelled.

Miners who suffered from power outages were no exception. More than 1,400,000 homes in the US are without power, according to data from PowerOutage, a power tracking website.

It is noteworthy that the affected miners are located in Texas. This state is known for its maximum loyalty to the flagship cryptocurrency and advocates the development of digital assets. Gov. Greg Abbott spoke about his desire for Texas to become the center of Bitcoin development. He also said that he would welcome entrepreneurs who want to develop the cryptocurrency industry in this state and said that he would help such business owners.

Despite the drawdown in bitcoin mining power, the receipt of the main digital asset should not slow down much. Many began to think about how decentralized the process of mining the flagship cryptocurrency is. Dennis Porter, CEO of the Satoshi Act Fund, noted the fact that the network is operating at its usual pace.

According to him, the loss of hashrate did not affect bitcoin mining as much as if, for example, Amazon or Google lost 33% of data centers. In the case of the latter, the loss would be much more significant than in the situation with bitcoin mining. However, he still noted the importance of offline miners.

If BTC mining didn’t slow down too much, the weakening of the network made blockchain transactions slower by 30%. John Sephanope, who founded FutureBit, confirmed this fact, citing geological disturbances. He also said that it would be much better if tens of millions of miners were involved in mining, making a small contribution to mining instead of what the BTC mining model is today:

If the hashrate were distributed evenly around the world by tens of millions of small miners instead of a few dozen large miners, this event would not even be registered on the network.

Since 2021, the US has begun to play a more serious role in the field of bitcoin mining. The reason for this was the prohibition of the Chinese authorities to engage in mining. Due to the relatively cheap electricity in Texas, many miners settled in this state. In addition, as mentioned earlier, the state governor has a positive attitude towards the idea of development of the cryptocurrency industry.

Since December 17, the flagship cryptocurrency has been going in a strictly lateral direction. Its cost varies between $16,700 and $16,900, while dropping to $16,400 and $16,600 a couple of times.