China Xinjiang Shutdowns Cut Bitcoin Hashrate ~10%, US Miners Expand Capacity
Bitcoin’s estimated network hashrate fell roughly 10% in one day, dropping by about 100–110 EH/s after mining farms in China’s Xinjiang region shut down. Former Canaan executive Kong Jianping estimated around 400,000 miners were taken offline (assuming ~250 TH/s per ASIC), reducing global hashrate and briefly slowing block production until the next difficulty adjustment. The outage underscores that regional enforcement can still move global mining estimates despite China’s lower post‑2021 share (now ~14–20%). Concurrently, US miners are expanding capacity — Hut 8 announced 1.5 GW of new sites across Texas, Louisiana and Illinois, and American Bitcoin bought 16,299 Antminers — illustrating a geographic reallocation of hashpower. Short‑term effects for traders include temporary drops in network difficulty, a transient improvement in miner revenue and hashprice for remaining miners, and potential volatility as markets price regulatory and operational risk in China. Longer‑term impacts depend on the speed of hashpower relocation and how much new capacity in friendly jurisdictions offsets the outage. BTC spot price was cited near $86,227 at reporting; machine counts and per‑unit hashrate are estimates and not independently confirmed.
Neutral
The news is neutral for BTC price when viewed overall. A sudden ~10% hashrate reduction can be bullish in the short term because lower network difficulty and reduced block competition temporarily raise miner revenue and hashprice for remaining miners, which can support market sentiment. However, the event is driven by regulatory enforcement in China — a source of recurring operational risk — which increases uncertainty and can produce short‑term volatility and risk premia. Longer term, the impact depends on how quickly displaced hashpower relocates (US expansions by Hut 8 and American Bitcoin suggest partial offset). If relocation is fast and global capacity increases, the disruption becomes transitory and price impact fades. If enforcement continues and more capacity is lost or constrained, that could be bearish. Given offsetting forces (temporary miner revenue boost vs. regulatory tail risk and likely relocation), the most balanced classification is neutral.