Bitcoin Steady Above $11,400 as Hashrate Reaches New High

Oct 14, 2020 at 11:20 UTCUpdated Oct 14, 2020 at 11:21 UTC.Bitcoin is consolidating recent gains alongside a record hashrate that suggests high miner confidence in the cryptocurrency's price prospects.

Prices clocked a high of $11,723 on Monday, having crossed into bullish territory above $11,200 over the weekend.

The bitcoin breather comes as seven-day average of the cryptocurrency's hashrate - a measure of the processing power dedicated to securing and recording blocks on the network - rose to a record high of 144.29 exahashes per second on Tuesday.

Arcane Research said in a tweet that the record hashrate is a sign bitcoin's fundamentals are stronger than ever.

Hashrate has increased by nearly 40% this year, despite the "Halving" event in May that cut miner rewards by half.

A rising hashrate suggests increasing confidence among miners about the economic viability of operations - in effect more mining machines are coming online as companies invest in the technology.

Miners largely operate on cash and liquidate their BTC holdings to fund operations.

They are likely to dedicate more resources to the computer-intensive mining process if they are bullish on price.

The options market is also aligned for a bullish move, as noted by crypto derivatives research firm Skew.Bitcoin's call options, or bullish bets, expiring in one, three, and six-months are drawing higher prices than the put options, or bearish bets.

On the downside, support is seen at $11,000, followed by the February high of $10,500.