About a year ago, at $70k we had 22.6 trillion difficulty. Currently, at $16k, we have 36 trillion difficulty. Apparently, hash rate isn't mainly affected by the price.
I think it's safe to assume the hash rate would have been much higher now if Bitcoin would have been at $100k now. The fact that it still went up is probably because new mining hardware got more powerful, but for sure miners have much less money to spend now.
Makes you wonder how much gear is just sitting idle waiting for the price of
BTC to go up or for enough for it to be worth it. And that if
BTC does jump to $22000 or $25000 or something else how fast will we se a hashrate spike. No waiting on gear, no setup time, no configuration. Just however long it takes to drive to the datacenter and start powering up the miners and chillers.
I know there are a lot of places sitting idle since it just does not pay to mine at the current prices, add $6000 to $9000, which is a lot of swing up from where it is but still possible in a short span of time. And all of a sudden there is going to be a bunch of us looking at the hashrate going where the hell did those miners come from?
-Dave