Last weekend the Bitcoin network hashrate has dropped more than 49%, after hitting an all-time high at 218 exahash per second, reaching 169 EH/s. Immediately after that, regional reporter Colin Wu tweeted about power outages in China. “The hashrate of Bitcoin mining pools plummeted in 24 hours. Antpool fell by 24.5%, Btc.com fell by 18.9%, Poolin fell by 33%, Binance pool fell by 20%,” he said. “The reason is that Northwest China is undergoing a complete blackout for safety inspections.”
It all started with a coal mine explosion that occurred in the Xinjiang region of northwest China, which led to a "major" power outage. As a result of this incident, all data centers were shut down and the hashrate of bitcoins instantly decreased. Wu Talk has also reported about a “comprehensive power outage safety audit".
According to Primitive Crypto partner Dovey Wan, the Chinese regions of Xinjiang and Sichuan combined account for more than 50 percent of the total Bitcoin mining hashrate. Operations based in China make up the bulk of the global mining industry and have a huge impact on Bitcoin’s price.
Against this backdrop, many traders were aggressively selling or buying Bitcoin, making the futures market incredibly overheated. And we are still seeing the consequences of everything that happened.
Now BTC is trading at $ 54,848, down 10% from its recently gained all-time high. The price of BTC is recovering after the weekend crash and the market structure itself does not look largely concerning. So right now we should be patient and wait for the situation to stabilize.