Bitcoin hash price hits record low, miners face 'survival game'

Author: Brayden Lindrea, CoinTelegraph; Compiler: Deng Tong, Golden Finance

Bitcoin's hash price, a key measure of how much miners earn per terahash, is near its lowest level on record.

Data from the Luxor Technology hash rate index shows that after hitting a two-month high of $0.095 on June 8, Bitcoin's hash price fell nearly 52% to $0.0459 per terahash second on June 24.

It was inching toward its all-time low of $0.0447 set on May 1, but rebounded to $0.0479 in the past few hours.

Bitcoin hashrate changes over the past 12 months. Source: Hashrate Index

Adam Ortolf, a developer at bitcoin mining firm Upstream Data, said in a June 23 post that the “survival game” has now begun for bitcoin miners.

“So far, #bitcoin hashrate seems to have fallen off a cliff from this difficult era,” Ortolf said. He believes miners are “suffering severely” with hashrates hovering around 0.05 TH/s.

Source: Adam Ortolf

Fortunately, most Bitcoin miners remain profitable under the current circumstances, said Mitchell Askew, chief analyst at Blockware Solutions.

Hashrate depends largely on Bitcoin's price, miner rewards and mining difficulty, and all three indicators have fallen sharply in recent weeks.

Bitcoin prices fell 6.8% to $60,590 last week — sentiment fell on news from Mt. Gox, which plans to sell $8.6 billion worth of bitcoin to creditors, and outflows from U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds over the past two weeks.

Meanwhile, bitcoin miner rewards were impacted by the fourth bitcoin halving since April 20, which cut the block subsidy from 6.25 BTC to 3,125 BTC — worth $188,800 at current prices.

Network mining difficulty — how hard it is to mine a block — also fell 5% to 83.68 trillion hashes after hitting an all-time high on April 25.

The massive sell-off in bitcoin also came from miners.

On June 19, Bitcoin miners’ reserves plummeted to 1.9 million BTC, the lowest level in 14 years in terms of Bitcoin.