BTC block time reaches yearly high as mining hash rate plunges amid arctic blast
Bitcoin mining mean hash rate dropped by over 45% between Dec. 24 and 25 as major miners curtailed or shut operations amid the winter storm.
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The arctic blast in the US has already claimed at least 22 lives and temperatures could dip dangerously below freezing levels. Amid the extreme weather conditions, several [cs_coin]BTC[/cs_coin] (BTC) miners have voluntarily curtailed or shut down operations to help the struggling power grid.
Foundry dropped its hash rate by over 44% or nearly 30 EH/s since the storm. Foundry's hash rate was down to 42.63 EH/s on Dec. 25 compared to 76.68 EH/s on Dec. 23, according to data from The Block.
The Bitcoin network's mean hash rate has dropped significantly to 156.36 EH/s on Dec. 24 from 252.98 EH/s on Dec. 21, Glassnode data shows.
Additionally, it is the biggest one-day negative hash rate adjustment in over 6 months — the mean hash rate dipped by over 46% on Dec. 24.
The drop in hash rate signifies that less mining power is devoted to mining BTC. This has caused Bitcoin's average block time to spike to a yearly high of 16.18 minutes, according to BitInfoCharts data. BTC block time signifies the time it takes to mine a block.
At the same time, the average BTC block confirmation time, i.e, the time it takes to add transactions into a mined block, has more than doubled in a day. According to Blockchain.com data, the average time to confirm a BTC block has jumped from 19.53 minutes on Dec. 23 to 46.78 minutes on Dec. 24.
Furthermore, the mining difficulty is expected to fall by 11.6% during the next adjustment cycle, Joe Burnett, head analyst at Blockware, said on Dec. 24. The next BTC mining difficulty adjustment is expected on Jan. 4, 2023.
