$BTC Hash Rate Falls 10% as Winter Storm Disrupts Miners
$BTC hash rate fell roughly 10% on Sunday as a sweeping U.S. winter storm knocked significant mining capacity offline, with operators curtailing electricity use tc ease pressure on strained power grids. The storm, named Fernan, drove extreme cold, snow, and ice across large parts of the country, leaving more than 1 million residents without power and prompting grid operators to issue conservation alerts.
Foundry USA, the largest Bitcoin #mining pool by hash rate, saw its connected computinc power drop by roughly 60% since Friday. Data from Miningpoolstats (dot)stream shows Foundry USA's hash rate falling from a recent peak near 328 exahashes per second to about 139 EH/s. Foundry currently accounts for roughly 23% of the global mining pool hash rate market share
An estimated 200 EH/s went offline across the network, pushing average Bitcoin block times above the protocol's 10-minute target Mempool data shows average block times climbing to roughly 12.4 minutes, with the next
#Bitcoin difficulty adjustment currently estimated at a 15% downward reset a mechanism designed to restore block production cadence after sustained hash rate declines.
Other U.S.-focused pools were also affected. Luxor, another maior North American mining pool, saw its hash rate fall from roughly 45 EH/s to around 26 EH/s over the same period. When large amounts of hash rate drop offline, #blocks are produced more slowly until the network's automated difficulty adjustment rebalances mining incentives.
#BTC #Bitcoin #CryptoWinterOver