Analysis: Bitcoin hashrate growth may slow down this summer

With the halving resulting in a 50 per cent reduction in mining rewards while hash rates continue to hit record highs, miners are finding their margins squeezed in an already congested industry. However, as North America enters summer and heatwaves hit, this continued growth will slow down in the coming months. During the summer, the problem of mitigating heat becomes more severe as companies need more power to cool their machines and/or stop operations due to high demand from energy consumers to turn on their air conditioners. Many miners have had to reduce operations during the summer, in part due to overheating of their machines, but also because residential energy consumption has reached a high enough level to activate the demand response clause in the miners' power purchase agreements.