Bitcoin’s price slump since the weekend has pushed hashprice, the dollar value of daily mining revenue per PH/s of computing power, below the critical level of $50/PH/s.
Data from Hashrate Index shows that Bitcoin’s hashprice has dropped to $48/PH/s, approaching the all-time low of around $45/PH/s set in early May after the fourth halving event. This figure is lower than the fleet hashcosts of several major mining operations tracked by TheMinerMag.
Bitcoin’s price fell over 3% on Friday to below $65,000, reportedly triggered by German authorities selling seized assets. The market sell-off continued over the weekend, with bitcoin plunging to $61,000 early Monday following news that Mt. Gox is set to repay creditors in July. This decline further propelled the liquidation of nearly $100 million in bitcoin long positions.
In response to the declining hashprice, some mining operations appear to be shutting down hashrate. Since the last difficulty adjustment on Thursday, the average block production time has increased to 10.5 minutes, according to data from Mempool Space. This is about 5% longer than the intended 10-minute per-block interval, indicating a reduction in the total hashing power on the network.
The average hashrate over the past three and seven days has dropped to 546 EH/s and 569 EH/s, respectively.
If the hashprice remains below $50/PH/s for an extended period, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty could see a significant downward adjustment in about 11 days.