TL;DR
Full Story
Let’s cap things off with a quick explainer on Bitcoin hash rates.
Why? Cause while it might seem like a small and simple thing, BTC hash rates can tell us a lot about the state of mining operations.
So what are BTC hash rates?
The hash rate is the amount of computational power used to mine a block.
(I.e. solve a bunch of complicated equations, process a bunch of BTC transactions, and get rewarded in BTC for doing so).
Each guess submitted by computers on the network is measured, and the hash rate is the number of guesses that are happening per second.
Right now, BTC’s hash rate price has dropped to all-time lows.
Meaning that fewer miners are competing to mine each block; and relative to before the BTC halving, while the rewards have been cut in half, the costs are way down too.
What’s this tell us about the state of mining operations?
The important thing here is that it seems ‘The Great Consolidation’ of mining operations has begun.
There are four leading public miners in the US: CleanSpark, Marathon, Riot Platforms and Cipher Mining. These companies are absolute beasts.
Since the above four have the hardware and infrastructure set up, the less it costs to mine BTC (the lower the hash rate price), the more profits they’ll potentially make.
With those profits, chances are they’ll snap up all of the smaller mining companies who struggle to be as efficient.
It’s a dog eat dog world out there!
