The BTC rate fell from $ 46,800 to $ 42,500, most altcoins also showed a fall. This is due to the possible start of an increase in interest rates in the United States and unrest in Kazakhstan.
On the evening of January 5, the bitcoin rate approached the lows of December, when it fell to $ 42,000, and on Thursday morning it remains slightly above $ 43,000. Ether, which ranks second in terms of market capitalization, followed Bitcoin, falling to $ 3,406. »And other coins: BNB fell to $ 457, SOL fell to $ 144.9, DOT fell to $ 25, and XRP fell to $ 0.7092. UNI and AAVE tokens also suffered losses: their rate dropped to $ 16.31 and $ 214.9, respectively.
The fall in the cryptocurrency market is partly due to the unrest in the stock market, which began after the publication of the minutes of the recent meeting of the US Federal Reserve (FRS). The sharp rise in inflation is forcing the regulator to tighten monetary policy, so the Fed plans to raise the interest rate in March. The stock indexes of the USA and the countries of the Asia-Pacific region reacted to this news with a sharp drop.
The bitcoin rate was also affected by the energy crisis in Kazakhstan due to the lack of oil, which led to an increase in gas prices. Mass protests are being organized across the country, and the administration of President Kasym-Zhomart Tokayev has declared a state of emergency to suppress the unrest, and the CSTO countries have introduced a peacekeeping contingent to Kazakhstan. With internet access cut off across the country on Wednesday, local miners were forced to stop mining bitcoin. This led to the fact that the hashrate of many mining pools has dropped significantly. How
informs Analyst of The Block Larry Cermak, the pools 1THash, OKExPool and KuCoinPool were especially hard hit, their hash rates decreased by 82%, 46.3% and 22.7%, respectively.
Note that, according to last year’s estimates of researchers at the Center for Alternative Finance at the University of Cambridge, 18% of the global hashrate of the Bitcoin network falls on Kazakhstan. Last year, the Chinese authorities imposed a ban on Bitcoin mining in the country, and miners began to move their equipment to other jurisdictions, including Kazakhstan.
Despite the current situation in the country, the government of Kazakhstan is generally supportive of mining. As of January 2022, Ministry of Digital Development of Kazakhstan
registered 146 cryptocurrency mining firms. These include 53 firms that are already active, 82 organizations are planning to start mining bitcoin, and 11 firms have registered as infrastructure providers.
This month in Kazakhstan came into force a law providing for an additional tax on electricity for miners. They are charged an additional fee of 1 tenge per kWh (about $ 0.0023). Kazakhstan attracted miners with its cheap electricity, but given the energy crisis, some mining companies began to leave in November.
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