Despite Bitcoin's fall, these data show that miners haven't given up

New data shows that despite a 15% drop in the price of Bitcoin over the past week, miners are not giving in.

Participation in bitcoin mining is as high as it was before the price drop, according to data site Coin Dance’s estimates of bitcoin’s hash rate, the amount of computing power devoted to maintaining the bitcoin network.

Bitcoin hashrate hits second record high

According to statistics, the hashrate on November 23 actually almost reached its all-time high. Statistics from Coin Dance show that Saturday’s data is almost the same as that on October 10, both reaching nearly 120,000 PH/S.

Bitcoin was trading around $7,200 that day, compared with $8,600 in October.

(Bitcoin computing power, source: Coin Dance)

Previously, Cointelegraph reported that as the price of Bitcoin fell, there was a growing belief that Bitcoin miners were exiting. Statistician Willy Woo said that as of this week, this process has been largely completed.

Based on the latest data, entrepreneur Alistair Milne disagreed, saying that miners don’t actually care much about current price trends.

“Miners are not surrendering,” he said in a tweet on Sunday. He continued:

“They are acutely aware of the upcoming halving and are clearly unfazed by the recent drop.”

Bitcoin mining difficulty decreases

Milne also believes that the increase in the difficulty of bitcoin mining, which had been declining until recently, is also related.

Mining difficulty, a measure of the effort required to mine a bitcoin block and which is regularly adjusted to suit current miner sentiment, saw its biggest drop of the year earlier this month, falling 7 percentage points.

(Bitcoin mining difficulty, source: Blockchain)

Analyst PlanB believes that the current difficulty trend also shows that people’s confidence in the profitability of mining still exists.

“2% difficulty adjustment: no miner capitulation,” he wrote on Friday, adding that such occurrences generally portend higher prices.

According to Crypto This’s “Real-time Difficulty Generator,” the next adjustment on December 5 could be nearly 5% above current levels.

Unlike mining difficulty, hashrate is difficult to estimate beyond a limited degree of precision and should not be used as a definitive guide to the level of miner participation.