After a drop in the hash rate following China’s crackdown, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty has dropped by almost 28 percent. According to cryptocurrency news site The Block, this is the largest drop in mining difficulty since 2009.
China’s cabinet, the State Council, pledged last month to crack down on mining and trading as part a series to reduce financial risk. Information on mining is not available. However, China produced about 65 percent of the global bitcoin production last year. According to data from University of Cambridge, Sichuan is China’s second-biggest Bitcoin mining province. Sichuan was its second-biggest producer.
Mining bitcoin is an energy-intensive process that can result in large inventories. Any attempts to sell the cryptocurrency will depress prices.
Authorities in Sichuan urged local governments to stop collaborating with crypto mining projects, and ordered them to shut down. The government banned the creation of new projects. Other regional mining centres, including Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia, have also ordered crackdowns against bitcoin mining.
Nearly every two weeks, the Bitcoin network updates its mining difficulty level. Since previous adjustments, there has been an unstable trend due to China’s continued crackdown on mining farms. The report stated that Bitcoin’s seven-day moving median hash rate fell from 136.3 EH/s down to 85 EH/s since the June 13th adjustment. This is down 35%.