China’s Continuous Rainstorms Sees Top Mining Pools Drop 15% In Hashrate

China’s southwestern province of Sichuan stands as a mountainous region, estimated to hold more than 50% of the total computing power of the Bitcoin network. Since last week, however, the region has been hit with a massive amount of rainstorms, with its peak happening over the last two days.

Massive Floods In Sichuan

These heavy rainstorms, in turn, have caused several power outages across parts of the province. This is due to the hydro-electric plants that power the region need to stop power generation to help with the discharge of floodwater. Some counties have even started to experience breakdowns in Internet and telecommunications. This comes by way of Kevin Pan, the co-founder, and CEO of PoolIn.

With the chaos going on over there, the Bitcoin (BTC) mining farms within the region have been forced to unplug from the network, at least for the time being. As it stands now, it’s not quite clear when the situation will resolve, as the rainstorms are still ongoing within the region.

Significant Drop In Hash Rate

BTC.com has shown that the top-four of the Bitcoin mining pools, that is, F2Pool, PoolIn, Antpool, and BTC.com,  have seen their hash rate drop down anywhere between 10% to 20% within the past 24 hours. All four of these pools are based in China, with their mutual computing power accounting for about 50% of the total hash power within the Bitcoin network.

In a Weibo post made on Tuesday China time, Pan explained that some mining farms had proactively paused operations ahead of time, instead of being forced to do so due to Internet and electrical disruptions. These mines have had their on-site staff evacuated in advance, as well, as a measure of safety precaution.

Xinhua News China, a Chinese news outlet, has stated that the accumulated rain within a dozen of the most-impacted cities in Sichuan had already gone past the average monthly volume of August in total, beating every year’s record. This all comes from just five days of rain between the 10th and 15th of August, alone.

Rain Aplenty

Another large complication is a major highway leading to the mountain area of Sichuan being shut down due to mudslides and severe flooding. This, of course, is where the majority of the mining farms are located, as well.

China’s monsoon season comes every year, and brings with it abundant rain. This rain then causes a large influx of hydropower, especially in the southwestern region of the country, such as Yunnan and Sichuan. This, in turn, leads to very cheap electricity prices, which Bitcoin miners find very attractive.