What Bear Market?
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New all-time highs for Bitcoin mining
- The latest difficulty adjustment hit an all-time high after an increase of 13.55%
- Bitcoin’s hash rate recently hit new highs—this is a big deal
- The block time for the previous 2016 blocks was 8 minutes and 46 seconds which is a stark contrast to the target of 10 minutes
What could this result in?: This adjustment could force miners who aren’t efficiently sourcing their energy to find ways to cut costs or channel untapped energy sources, such as utilizing wasted heat. Either way you look at it, it’s a healthy step forward for the long game.
Build, build, build
- Stratum V2, an open source protocol for pooled mining that makes data transfers more efficient and reduces physical infrastructure, is in a decade-long upgrade that is finally in beta
- Luxor Technologies launched their hashprice derivative, which gives miners a much-needed hedging instrument
- ZEBEDEE announced a new non-profit initiative that contributes open-source code and products to the Bitcoin Lightning space
- River launched RLS for Lightning devs last week
Why is this important?: Despite Bitcoin being down this year, there’s still so much progress happening under the hood by those who have been building through multiple cycles. Survive and advance.
Speaking of the bear market...
Where does this bear market stand in comparison to the ones that came before it? Of course, past performance does not indicate future results, but let’s take a look at how long each bear market lasted, defined by the number of days between cycle peak and bottom.
- Bear market #1: 164 days (2011)
- Bear market #2: 413 days (2014 - 15)
- Bear market #3: 371 days (2018)
- Bear market #4: 343 days and counting (2022-?)
What’s the takeaway?: It’s important to note that the world is in its first recession since 2008 (Bitcoin was created in ‘09). That being said, if the last three bear markets are any indicator of what to expect, the bottom of this cycle could be less than 100 days away.