The Bitcoin network hashrate has increased more than 21% from 560 exahashes per second (EH/s) at the start of July to a record 679 EH/s on Friday; it has since settled at 646 EH/s. The hashrate is based on a seven-day simple moving average, as calculated by mining firm Luxor Technology.
As hashrate grows, competition among miners to validate and add a new block to the network also increases, making it harder for dishonest and malicious actors to attack the blockchain network.
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“Higher hashrate is a result of recovering revenues and miners being fairly paid now after experiencing an extremely underpaid situation since April, after the Bitcoin halving,” a Wednesday report published from blockchain analytics firm CryptoQuant stated.
The price of BTC has risen 23% from f $54,092 on July 4 to a current price of $66,485, per CoinGecko. As a result, selling pressure has cooled.
“Bitcoin outflows from miners have remained generally lower than earlier in the year, signaling less selling pressure from miners as prices recovered,” CryptoQuant analysts wrote. “Daily Bitcoin miner outflows have remained between ~5K-10K [BTC] in July, compared to 10K-20K [BTC] in early March (when Bitcoin first touched $70K) and lower than the spikes seen in April-May, after the Bitcoin halving.”
Even though smaller miners, defined as those having a balance of 1-100 bitcoins, have seen their total holdings decrease about 13.6% from the start of the year to now, larger miners, who hold between 100-1,000 bitcoins, have seen their holdings increase, per CryptoQuant’s data. These larger miners held about 61,000 BTC tokens at the beginning of 2024 and have since increased their holdings by 6.6% to 65,000 bitcoins, worth over $4.3 billion at current prices.