China, particularly the Northwest region of it, boasts some of the top Bitcoin mining pools out there, and these same mining pools have witnessed a significant dive in hash power. This is primarily thanks to regional blackouts within the country to allow for various safety inspections. Sometimes, you have to suffer to maintain the power supply.
Safety Inspections Causing Mining Pools To Drop Power
The news itself, given by Wublock’s author, Wu Blockchain, explained that a number of major mining pools have seen significant drops in their hash rates. BBTC.com saw an 18.9% drop, Binance pool recorded a 20% dip, Antpool crashed by 24.5%, and Poolin saw a spectacular 33% drop in hash rate.
The hashrate of Bitcoin mining pools plummeted in 24 hours. Antpools fell by 24.5%, https://t.co/1YRYr58dLy fell by 18.9%, Poolin fell by 33%, Binance pools fell by 20%. The reason is that Northwest China is undergoing a complete blackout for safety inspections. pic.twitter.com/vaWgYsMEFH
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) April 16, 2021
Wu Talk, another Chinese media outlet, gave an article about the matter at large. According to this article, Xinjiang, one of China’s many provinces, is experiencing a “comprehensive power outage” thanks to an ongoing safety inspection within the province.
Mine Floods Cause Wakeup Call
These inspections come after a coal mine in Xinjian witnessed a flooding accident. This accident caused 21 miners across three different locations to be trapped temporarily. The gist of the accident involved the mine suddenly being flooded while it was in the process of making technical upgrades. The result of this was underground power outages and communication interruptions. In the end, close to 1,500 rescue personnel had to be deployed to the min in order to assist with the emergency at large.
Now, Xinjian stands as one of the biggest sources of Bitcoin’s global hash rate out there. The Cambridge Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index (BECI), estimates that roughly 36% of China’s entire combined hashing power comes from Xinjian alone. China as a whole represents around two-thirds of the world’s mining power for Bitcoin to begin with, and BECI estimates that Xianjian in particular thus comprises around 23.3% of the world’s hash rate.
2.2% Drop In Global BTC Hash Rate
Ycharts shows that the outages seemed to have caused Bitcoin’s total hash rate to drop by a factor of 2.2% within the past 24 hours. In other words, the hash rate went from 169.4 million terahashes per second (TH/s) to 165.79 TH/s at the time of writing.
Time will tell how long these power inspections will last, but it’ll be sorted as quickly as possible, no doubt. Money is being lost in a time where Bitcoin seems to only want to go skywards. In the meantime, one of the powerhouses of crypto mining has been severely limited.
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