The new year has courted an explosion in bitcoin hash rate. According to data from Glassnode, the global hash rate is now 208 million terahashes per second. According to blockchain.com, the previous all-time high of 198.5 million terahashes per second was reached on Apr. 15, 2021. This shows that bitcoin has shed the dip in hash rate corresponding to the Chinese multi-stage crackdown on cryptocurrencies in 2021. According to Bitfury, most of the recovery is due to “new generation equipment coming online,” not the relocation of equipment from China, which would have been too inefficient to run in other countries.
In April 2021, Beijing officials began scrutinizing local miners’ energy usage, sending notices to data centers to gather more information on cryptocurrency mining. In May 2021, China banned banks from offering bitcoin services and began a systematic crackdown on mining activities. This caused the hash rate to dip steadily, hitting an all-time low on Jul. 21, 2021, of 58.4 million terahashes/s. This corresponded with a drop in price to $29.79K. Before this, on Apr. 15, 2021, a peak in the price of $62K corresponded with a spike in the global hash rate.
