Does this mean that Bitcoin is becoming vulnerable to geopolitical risks? Not really. In many other ways, Bitcoin has become more resilient since last year’s crackdown in China led to a redistribution of mining around the world.
However, there are important lessons for both miners and governments to learn from the fact that the Bitcoin mining economy has been significantly impacted by the actions of one dictator whose country now holds a significant place in global mining
. How good is the Great Hash Migration?
According to MiningPoolStats, the hash power of the largest mining pools — a reasonable measure of the total Bitcoin hashrate — has dropped by 12.7%.
Of course, the decline was due to other factor
First, it happened right after network bandwidth hit a new all-time high at the beginning of the new year.
Secondly, it coincided with a sharp drop in the price of bitcoin, caused by news of the tightening of the US monetary policy, which likely caused some miners to turn off inefficient and unprofitable machines.
However, it was a particularly noticeable decline. And unlike seemingly anomalous random spikes, such as the hashrate drop on November 24, apparently caused by a technical glitch in the Binance mining pool, as shown in the chart below, the main reason for this was a political event in Kazakhstan.