Chinese miners seem to have completed the annual migration from Sichuan region: hash rate of BTC at 157.5 EH/s
In the last 24 hours, the hash power of the Bitcoin network (BTC) has increased by about 30%: if sustained, we may soon see a significant increase in difficulty.
According to Coinwarz, currently Bitcoin’s hash rate is about 157.5 exahashes per second (EH/s) after temporarily exceeding 160 EH/s. In other words, BTC’s hash power has increased by 42% in just two days!
Bitcoin, monthly hash rate graph
Bitcoin, monthly hash rate chart.
This sudden increase follows a collapse of hash power at the end of October, which many analysts attributed to the end of the rainy season in the Chinese region of Sichuan.
Sichuan is in fact characterized by abundant and economic hydropower: according to some estimates, 80% of Chinese miners move to the province during the rainy season. According to a CoinShares study, the region accounted for 54% of global mining activity in December.
Jason Deane, analyst at Quantum Economics, believes that the increase in Bitcoin’s hash power is a sign that many Chinese miners have completed the migration process from Sichuan and restored operations in other provinces, such as Xinjian and Inner Mongolia:
“Whoa! Big increase in Bitcoin’s hash rate in the last 10 hours (+29.7% from minimum to peak). A large number of machines suddenly went online somewhere in the world: have the miners in the Sichuan region completed the transfer?
Last week, the Bitcoin network recorded the biggest negative correction of the difficulty in the last nine years: a 16% collapse. It is likely that the return of Sichuan miners will reverse this trend.
This week, En+ Group, the leading low-carbon aluminum producer and the largest hydroelectric power generator in the private sector, announced a mining joint venture with BitRiver.
Thanks to its increased liquidity, transferability and availability in open markets 24 hours a day, Cascarilla sees tokenized gold and other assets as the future.
“In my opinion, this is actually an inevitable trend related to where the assets will be stored,” he explained about the on-chain commodities. However, an important obstacle stands in the way: develop “inertia” towards adoption.
To date, Paxos has tokenized $75 million in gold, or 37,000 ounces – just a fraction of the global gold market estimated at $7,300 billion. Cascarilla emphasizes that widespread adoption is slowed down by the prerequisites: decide before adopting the blockchain, and then choose gold as an asset to carry onchain.
However, he believes that a multiplier of 5 to 10 on the AUM, bringing the total market for tokenized gold above $ 1 billion, is the stage when the market for tokenized assets will really start to buy speed.