Over the past week, the province of Sichuan, China, has been facing heavy rainfall. Consequently, major Bitcoin mining pools have been affected, which has somewhat triggered a hashrate drop in the cryptocurrency’s network. Recently, the overall Bitcoin network hashrate reached a new all-time high.
Heavy rainfall in Sichuan inflicts significant hashrate drop
Reports noted that the province constitutes more than 50 percent of the Bitcoin network’s total computing power, as many miners migrate to the region due to cheaper electricity rates. However, the massive flood in the province, which worsened a few days ago, has forced some miners to stop operations for the meantime.
Most of the regions are having internet and telecommunication difficulties, as a result of the incident, according to the CEO of Poolin, Kevin Pan. More so, most regions are experiencing downtime in electricity supply as hydro-plants were being deployed to help regulate the massive flood.
Following the concentration of miners in the region, several cryptocurrency miners have been affected by the development, which has inflicted a hashrate drop on Bitcoin mining power. The hashrate dropped to 105 EH/s from as high as 140 EH/s, According to Coinmetrics, a crypto-asset market data provider.
Big Four mining pools also took a hit
Noteworthily, the four love Bitcoin mining pools – F2Pool, PoolIn, Antpool, and BTC.com – are all based in China. These four pools make up 50 percent of the entire Bitcoin network. However, they were also affected by the incident, which saw their hashrate drop between 10 percent to 20 percent over the past 24 hours. Additionally, most mining farms closed operations and dismiss their on-site staff in time for safety reasons. Besides, a major highway that leads to the mining territory was shut down as well. The heavy rainfall in China is creating havoc for both the miners and citizens at large, and it has exceeded the average record for the month ever noted.
