The Morning After: Bitcoin Cash Hash Rate Drops And Block Production Decreases

Bitcoin Cash saw its halving happen yesterday, and the effects on the network are already evident. The hash rate has dropped substantially, and the time between blocks has also increased.

Bitcoin Cash Halving Consequences: Hash Rate Drops

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) had its halving yesterday, and the reward for adding blocks on its blockchain was halved to 6.25 BCH.

Naturally, this had an immediate effect on the network’s overall performance. First things first, the hash rate dropped substantially.

As seen in the above chart, the hash rate dropped from 4.36 EH/s yesterday to 1.7 EH/s at the time of this writing, representing a decrease slightly less than 60%.

Back on April 1st, Arcane Research published a report outlining some of the potential consequences of the halving. The document says that there is a real risk that the hash rate would also be slashed in half, hence suggesting “volatile days coming into the halving, and in the immediate aftermath.”

It’s also quite obvious that at present, the hash rate of the Bitcoin Cash network is particularly insignificant compared to the Bitcoin’s.

Block Time Increased

Before the halving, BCH blocks usually took about 10 minutes to be mined, giving the network an average of six blocks per hour.

At the time of this writing, however, there are periods when the network produces only half that amount or 60% of it in an hour, according to a popular explorer.

Yesterday, almost immediately after the halving, the team at BitMEX Research noticed that the time between blocks is increasing substantially. At the time, one block was mined in more than an hour.

It has now been an hour since the halving and still no more blocks.

After the 50% reward drop, did miners leave for other coins or is this just variance?http://t.co/rSyxtls3Yj pic.twitter.com/w380dcC4tj

— BitMEX Research (@BitMEXResearch) April 8, 2020

In terms of price effects, the halving didn’t cause any serious movements, as BCH remains at around $264, marking a slight 3% decrease on the day.

It remains very interesting to see whether or not BCH’s halving will cause miners to switch their gear off and consider other cryptocurrencies. So far, given the drastic drop in the hash rate, it appears that a lot of them are reconsidering their options.