Arijit Sarkar
Monday marks the 13th year since Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, mined the genesis block, or block 0, of the Bitcoin network and, for the first time, mined a reward of 50 Bitcoin (BTC) back on Jan. 3, 2009. Fast-forward to 2022, the Bitcoin network shows no signs of slowing down, reaching a new all-time high hash rate of 207.53 exahashes per second (EH/s).
The Bitcoin hash rate, which correlates to the strength of the network based on the number of active miners, saw a temporary downfall after China banned citizens and businesses from pursuing crypto mining and trading activities. As a direct result of China’s blanket ban on crypto causing a sudden shortage of miners, the Bitcoin hash rate fell to 58.46 EH/s.
As evidenced by the above graph, Bitcoin’s hash rate saw an eventual comeback as Chinese miners began migrating to friendly jurisdictions. On Saturday, the Bitcoin network recorded a new all-time high of 207.53 EH/s, reclaiming the network’s security by increasing the mining difficulty.
At the time of writing, the Bitcoin network hash rate stands at 190.64 EH/s, down 8.14% from its all-time high.
William Suberg
Almost 10,000 Bitcoin (BTC) left major United States-based exchange Coinbase on Dec. 30 in a sign that investor appetite is returning to the sphere. Data from on-chain monitoring resource Coinglass shows Coinbase’s professional trading arm, Coinbase Pro, shedding 9,925 BTC in the 24 hours to New Year’s Eve.
The buy-in, which runs in contrast to rising or flat balances on other major exchanges, marks a conspicuous short-term trend shift. The latter half of December has been characterized by platforms such as Binance and OKEx seeing increased inflows of BTC — something commentators feared could be a forewarning of a sell-off.
While such a mass sale of BTC has not yet occurred, not everyone believes that it will stay that way. At the same time, the exodus of registered Chinese users from exchange Huobi Global could be triggering a reorganization of funds, a more recent theory suggests.
According to Coinglass, Binance is up 840 BTC as of Friday, while OKEx has seen 767 BTC inflows. Huobi has lost a mere 158 BTC, but in December as a whole, a giant 14,044 BTC has left its books, hinting at the extent of the Chinese user exodus.
On the monthly view, Binance easily wins in terms of inflows, now up over 66,000 BTC versus the end of November. Nonetheless, it was Coinbase attracting pundits as 2021 drew to a close. “Coinbase buying has been pretty nonstop today,” popular Twitter trader Ryan Clark summarized.
William Suberg
Bitcoin (BTC) exchange reserves are back near record lows as 2022 sparks renewed appetite among buyers. Data from on-chain analytics firm CryptoQuant shows reserves across 21 exchanges at 2.308 million BTC as of Jan. 4.
Late December saw a macro low of 2.303 million BTC left on exchanges’ books, CryptoQuant recorded, before a brief uptick to 2.334 million.
As institutional entities return to the market after the holiday period, however, the downtrend has resumed; this is in line with expectations that larger-volume buyers would step in beginning in Q1.
Exchange balance data is a topic of some debate this week. Different statistics sources use varying numbers of exchanges and wallets, resulting in data that is barely comparable.
CryptoQuant’s 21 exchanges, for example, compete with 18 monitored by Glassnode and five by CoinMetrics.
Another resource, Cryptorank, put the balance at just 1.3 million BTC on Christmas Eve. Depending on the platforms included, the trend may also be different, as some exchanges have seen an overall reduction in their balance over the past month, while others have seen an increase.
As Cointelegraph reported, this was the case with Huobi Global, which was obliged to deregister Chinese mainland users by the end of 2021 in line with regulations.
This Daily Dose was brought to you by Cointelegraph.
