TechFlow News: On January 26, according to The Block, the widespread U.S. winter storm “Fernan” forced Bitcoin miners to significantly cut production to alleviate strain on the power grid. Foundry USA’s mining pool hash rate dropped approximately 60% since last Friday—from 328 EH/s to 139 EH/s. Roughly 200 EH/s of hash rate went offline network-wide, causing Bitcoin block production time to extend from the standard 10 minutes to 12.4 minutes.
This extreme weather has already left over one million residents without power, prompting grid operators to issue energy-saving alerts. Other North American mining pools—including Luxor—also experienced notable hash rate declines. The next Bitcoin difficulty adjustment is expected to decrease by approximately 15% to restore the block production pace.
