Against the backdrop of a rapid drop in hash rate, driven by electricity outages in China, the Bitcoin network’s average fee rose above $60.
The last time such a high figure was observed was at the end of 2017—at the peak of the previous bull market cycle.
Alongside the rise in fees, Bitcoin’s hash rate is falling — from a peak above 170 EH/s, the 7-day smoothed moving average has fallen to 143 EH/s (-18%).
The decline in the un-smoothed hash rate over two days amounted to 46% (from 197 EH/s to 106 EH/s, according to glassnode).
A reduction in total network compute power, with the same difficulty, led to an increase in the interval between blocks to 15 minutes.
While the difficulty of the first cryptocurrency remains at a record high — 22.24 T — the BTC.com service forecasts a 5.69% decline in the metric following the upcoming difficulty adjustment, expected in roughly 12 days.
On April 19, in the Bitcoin blockchain, the longest interval between two blocks in years was recorded. According to Blockchain.com, block #679785 was mined at 15:12 MSK, and the next one — #679786 — at 17:14 MSK. This means some users had to wait more than two hours for a deposit to be credited.
The decline in hash rate began with electricity outages in several Chinese provinces, where significant Bitcoin mining capacity is concentrated.
Shortly after this, the price of Bitcoin fell by almost $10,000.
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