Bitcoin hash rate continues to rise, but DeFi is under threat: Report

cointelegraph.com:

The beginning of 2023 raised hopes that the blockchain industry was on the path toward recovery, but weaker-than-hoped financial performance and a bout of negative news in February have cast doubts on this outlook. However, these headwinds do not affect all sectors of the industry uniformly. Nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and security tokens have managed to decouple from the broader environment and showed positive signs in February, but the rest of the market remains cautious.

For those serious about understanding the crypto space’s various sectors, Cointelegraph Research publishes a monthly Investors Insights report that dives into venture capital, derivatives, decentralized finance (DeFi), regulation and much more. Compiled by leading experts on these various topics, the monthly reports are an invaluable tool to quickly get a sense of the current state of the blockchain industry.

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The bear market has witnessed multiple news stories about struggling miners, particularly publicly traded United States mining operations with high levels of debt that correspondingly suffered from lower Bitcoin (BTC) prices. However, the release of new, highly efficient mining hardware in 2022 — such as Bitmain’s Antminer S19 Pro and S19 XP and Microbt’s WhatsMiner M53 — has resulted in efficiency gains of up to 30%, according to data from Hashrate Index. Cointelegraph Research’s August 2022 trends report pointed investors to the release of this new hardware and projected that the Bitcoin network’s hash rate would rise as a result.

Since August, the hash rate has indeed kept hitting new all-time highs despite the bearish market conditions, which traditionally cause