Bitcoin's
Hashrate Hits New All-Time High Despite Recent Price Drop
Bitcoin’s hashrate has hit a
new all-time high this month, despite its price drop of over 12% last week
after it was rejected at the $10,000 mark and endured a sell-off associated
with the coronavirus outbreak.
According to CryptoCompare’s data, BTC’s
hashrate has kept on climbing ahead of May’s halving event, which will see
block rewards drop from 12.5 BTC per block to 6.25 BTC per block.
Historically, the cryptocurrency’s price has risen after each halving, and as
a result some see it as a bullish event.
Miners are adding hashrate to
the network, likely in an attempt to reap as much BTC as possible from the
current block rewards before these are cut in half. Bitcoin’s hashrate has
seen a near-linear growth since April 2019, and reached a new all-time high
of over 120 quintillion hashes per second this month.
The breakeven cost to mine a
single bitcoin is estimated to nearly double following May’s halving event,
from $6,800 to $12,500. A total of 18.2 million BTC have already been mined,
out of its 21 million maximum supply.
