Bitcoin Hashrate Hits All-Time High as Publicly-Listed Miners’ Share of the Network Peaks

The seven day moving average of bitcoin’s (BTC) hashrate has hit an all-time high of 703 exahashes per second (EH/s), the first time the network’s hashrate has cracked 700 EH/s, according to Glassnode data.

Hashrate refers to the total combined computational power used to mine and process transactions on a proof-of-work blockchain, such as bitcoin. Bitcoin’s hashrate has grown almost 13% since the halving event in April, when the total number of bitcoin produced per day was cut in half to 450 BTC.

Data from bitcoin mining analyst Sebastian Ski shows that 12 of the top publicly traded miners contributed 28.9% to the total hashrate in September, translating to over 200 EH/s. Their contribution to the hashrate continues to increase month-over-month and has jumped by almost 10% since October 2022.

Ski alludes to “The public miners are taking market share away from other miners in the world.”

Ski also mentions that the biggest gainers in hashrate growth in the past 12 months are: CleanSpark (CLSK), MARA Holdings (MARA), Riot Platforms (RIOT), and IREN. This also coincides with the top bitcoin miners seeing month-over-month production growth for September.

Bitcoin mining is one of the hardest industries to stay profitable, due to it’s capital intensive nature, on top of block rewards getting cut in half every four years. As a result, the weaker miners will have to unplug from the network, as staying online is not financially viable. Therefore, miners with the lowest cost of energy or the strongest balance sheet will continue to increase network share.

Bitcoin’s hashprice, which measures mining profitability, recently jumped to $50 per petahash per second (PH/s) for the first time since August, according to Glassnode data. The slight surge in hashprice was due to bitcoin’s price climbing to $68,000 and an increase in transaction fees due to the on-chain minting of the runes protocol that made up over 50% of all transaction fees on Oct. 17.

As a result of the hashrate hitting all-time highs, the next difficulty adjustment is scheduled to increase by over 4% on Oct. 23. Bitcoin’s difficulty adjusts every 2016 blocks based on the hashrate, ensuring that blocks are consistently mined on an average every 10 minutes.