Bitcoin News & Info

As the cryptocurrency bear market presses on many investors worry that Bitcoin was just another passing fad. Bitcoin recently broke down past $8000 and is struggling to find support around $7800, the same level where Bitcoin broke out in early April in an attempt to break above $10000. The overall market capitalization is also in a steady decline breaking $400 billion from its all-time highs of over $830 billion.

A glimpse into Bitcoin’s hash rate

Guessing at hundreds, thousands, or millions of calculations to solve a block — a mining unit’s hash rate reflects the number of guesses it can make in any given second when completing one of Bitcoin’s computational puzzles. Looking at the chart, we see a very steady increase in hash rate during the months leading up to and after the market sell-off. Many consider an increasing hash rate to be a precursor of healthy price action.

While costs vary dramatically across borders, mining a single unit of BTC will cost thousands of dollars at lowest — and $26,170 per coin in the case of South Korea.

From the data presented we can draw the conclusion that the overall outlook on Bitcoin is bullish, at least in the eyes of the miners. After all, miners would not want to allocate their resources mining a digital asset they believe to be worthless. Miners are in the business to make money and perhaps the downturn in this market will allow them to accumulate more bitcoin at lower prices in preparation for the next Bull Run.

Many traders focus only on the technical outlook and can overlook solid fundamentals and clues such as an increasing hash rate. If the hash rate were to be falling in congruence with price, then there would be cause for concern. That would tell us that miners are less interested in mining Bitcoin and could be turning their focus to mining other cryptocurrencies or not mining at all. It seems to me that miners are taking a longer-term view on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, ignoring short-term downtrends in the market. This fact alone should give investors confidence that there is still a lot of interest in Bitcoin and in mining specifically. Network support is very strong and should continue to grow.