BTC mining, mempool, fees, and transaction backlog - HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM
 | I'll keep this brief: BTC mining is seeing a 40% drop in hashpower. BCH mining hashpower has more than doubled in the last 24 hours. But 68 exahashes of SHA256 mining power has gone offline. There is speculation about a coal mine explosion or flood in China's Xinjiang province, but there's no solid news as of this writing. As a result of this rapid drop in hashpower, BTC fees are skyrocketing ($40/transaction as of this writing), the BTC mempool (transaction backlog) is quite full, and BTC block intervals are running very high (between blocks 679483 and 679484 there was a 75 minute delay). Since BTC difficulty only adjusts every 2016 blocks (usually 2 weeks), and it adjusted 3 days ago, the diff may not adjust for another 2 weeks at the current hashrate. We could be seeing the early signs of a BTC panic if the Chinese mining power doesn't come back online soon. Charts [link] [comments] |
