Bitcoin's Hashrate Hits Record 549 EH/s in Early 2024 Amid Rising Difficulty and

[sirty143]

Bitcoin's Hashrate Hits Record 549 EH/s in Early 2024 Amid Rising Difficulty and Lower Hash Price

As the first week of 2024 concluded, Bitcoin’s hashrate shattered another lifetime high on Jan. 6, achieving an unprecedented 549 exahash per second (EH/s). Though the hashrate dipped post-Dec. 25, 2023, falling from 546 EH/s to a low of 510 EH/s, it rebounded amidst a declining hash price and an intervening hike in difficulty. See more for yourself here.

Your opinion is greatly appreciated.

[Wiseman]

Bitcoin's Hashrate Hits Record 549 EH/s in Early 2024 Amid Rising Difficulty and Lower Hash Price

As the first week of 2024 concluded, Bitcoin’s hashrate shattered another lifetime high on Jan. 6, achieving an unprecedented 549 exahash per second (EH/s). Though the hashrate dipped post-Dec. 25, 2023, falling from 546 EH/s to a low of 510 EH/s, it rebounded amidst a declining hash price and an intervening hike in difficulty. See more for yourself here.

Your opinion is greatly appreciated.

Do you think they will start shutting down their mega-mining farms like before? I remember how it was last time and the transfer of bitcoin could take a very long time, I noticed that already now some transfers are very long and they will stop using it or rather stop using it as a transitional coin.

[Stompix]

As the first week of 2024 concluded, Bitcoin’s hashrate shattered another lifetime high on Jan. 6, achieving an unprecedented 549 exahash per second (EH/s). Though the hashrate dipped post-Dec. 25, 2023, falling from 546 EH/s to a low of 510 EH/s, it rebounded amidst a declining hash price and an intervening hike in difficulty.

Hashrate growling one day and going down the other has nothing to do with any economics, it's just about luck.
That difference of 36 exahash is the equivalent of 300 000 S19 or 600 million in gear or 900MW (a nuclear reactor) of energy being turned on and off.
The daily hashrate is calculated from the blocktime and with this being random you get random results:
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-confirmationtime.html#3m

What matters is what we have after an epoch, and the last difficulty adjustment on the 6th said 73,197,634,206,448 that's 523.83 EH/s!
Thinking that miners could switch on and off 40-50 exahahs of hash every day is just...

Do you think they will start shutting down their mega-mining farms like before? I remember how it was last time and the transfer of bitcoin could take a very long time,

When did that happen? 
Even if 90% of the mining farms will shut down once the adjustment kicks in the normal blocktime of a block 10 minutes will kick in again.
For a constant loss of transactions capacity you will have to have constant loss of mining power every two week, so 10 of miens to quit this week, then again 10% then again and so on, and the moment you have a two week interval nobody quit the transaction capacity is the same.

[joniboini]

I remember how it was last time and the transfer of bitcoin could take a very long time, I noticed that already now some transfers are very long and they will stop using it or rather stop using it as a transitional coin.

I don't think the long confirmation is because miners reduce their activity though, since the hashrate is still quite strong. If anything the network is just being spammed and highly in-demand due to the hype of ordinals. I believe miners won't stop just because the difficulty is increasing steadily, as long as they can keep making some profits. It is not like they are doing solo mining anyway, CMIIW.

[Stompix]

I don't think the long confirmation is because miners reduce their activity though, since the hashrate is still quite strong.

Of curse it hasn't, these are the growth in difficulty (also hashrate) since the new ordinal madness started in October

824,544   2024-01-06 02:41:32   73,197,634,206,448 - 73.20 T   + 1.65 %   0x1703d869   09 min 50 s   523.83 EH/s
822,528   2023-12-23 08:04:24   72,006,146,478,567 - 72.01 T   + 6.98 %   0x1703e8b3   09 min 21 s   515.36 EH/s
820,512   2023-12-10 05:57:24   67,305,906,902,031 - 67.31 T   - 0.96 %   0x17042e95   10 min 07 s   481.18 EH/s
818,496   2023-11-26 02:16:03   67,957,790,298,897 - 67.96 T   + 5.07 %   0x17042450   09 min 31 s   486.35 EH/s
816,480   2023-11-12 18:24:33   64,678,587,803,496 - 64.68 T   + 3.55 %   0x17045a12   09 min 39 s   462.95 EH/s
814,464   2023-10-30 05:53:23   62,463,471,666,732 - 62.46 T   + 2.35 %   0x17048194   09 min 46 s   447.06 EH/s
812,448   2023-10-16 14:32:45   61,030,681,983,175 - 61.03 T   + 6.47 %   0x17049ca9   09 min 24 s   436.89 EH/s

a 25% increase in total in two months, might no sound much but in terms of energy it's the equivalent of 3.5GW, for comparison the total installed production capacity of Salvador is 2.3 GW.

I believe miners won't stop just because the difficulty is increasing steadily, as long as they can keep making some profits.

Miners stopping would make the difficulty go down anyhow so this would be something impossible.

Transaction confirmations are more about the fees you paid rather than a +/- 5% faster slower blocks in a two week period.