Bitcoin Forum

An Internet connection from Kazahstan was shut down and it could be possible because of protest from the gas price.

I saw a tweet from @lawmaster - https://twitter.com/lawmaster/status/1478764142957846531/photo/1
Where pointing that there is dropped about -12% from hash rate of Bitcoin about 10 hours ago and if you can see we saw a dumped on the price of Bitcoin.

Could this be the reason for dumping? Bitcoin dumped for almost 10% from $46,000 down to sub $42000.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FIWgAPWX0AYPL6I?format=png&name=small

Kazakh miners are the second that generate bitcoin mining hashrate generating about 18.1% of the total while United States is the first with a total of about 35.4%. This can lead to some people thinking the protest in Kazakhstan that led to the Kazakh government to shot down the internet leading to 13.4% reduction in the hashrate Kazakh miners are generating could lead to bitcoin price reduction.

But, this is what I read recently about Federal Reserve's December FOMC meeting that might be connected to bitcoin price reduction:


Although, I am not certain what could have caused this recent drop but more linked to when the meeting surfaced to showed that the regulator is committed to decreasing its balance sheet and increasing interest rates in 2022.

I do not think the mining hashrate reduction in Kazakhstan caused this. Also that the mempool is not even congested at all. Even if the mempool is congested, I do not see how people could sell off their bitcoin all because of what is happening in Kazakhstan that led to reduction in mining hashrate as a result of internet shot down.

Bitcoin is down because the Federal Reserve will be raising interest rates in 2022 and also because there is an unlocking of about 100,000 BTC from MtGox this month, I believe. This drop in price, and any further decline, presents an opportunity for those who were waiting for lower prices to get into BTC, IMO.

I don't think there's a direct correlation between the drop in hash rate with BTC and its price. Maybe the negativity with the news on it affected the people speculating before (with the cost of BTC increasing) and now decreasing and are just taking profit or cutting losses that they may have. Or maybe someone just dumped their bags because they need them so much, possibly with the new year or something.

What other parameters can we check to see if the two variables are connected?

It could be but mostly because of the current market sentiment that price didn't go up so there is a tendency for going down so any news, even the most irrelevant ones (hashrate drop is relevant though) can easily cause a drop. So basically people are waiting to panic sell and they do it as soon as they get an excuse.

bitcoin hashrate swings from 160exa to 200exa range
12% is only about 20exa. so within range of the norm.. thus no effect on day to day activity

what you will find is people in Kazakhstan cannot mine, so they cant get bitcoin... but their internet is down, so they also cant purchase from the market either. nor can they sell any coin they had mined the day before.

over all. kazakhstan wont affect the price. they wont be jumping on the market + or -. as they have no access.

what you will find is americans, europeans now get a 12% better 'luck' of them winning a block. or more precisely american/euros get a few more shares of the reward than they did because their kazakh's pool partners are not there doing the work taking slices out of the reward pie away from other countries in the pool

if americans are getting a 12% bonus then it brings their average 'cost' of mining of $40k/coin to now earn them more sats per block. and so they may want to sell a bit sooner as its slightly more profit.

but with that said because kazakh's are not mining and not able to access the markets to sell rewards. their lower $30k mining cost/coin means they are not going to be selling today. which will counter any sell pressure the americans might cause.

this 12% ~ 20exa change is not out of the scope of normal daily movement.. so not really a game changer to the markets.

IMO this is all very short-term and irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, but a precedent of a country shutting down Internet is much more interesting. This just shows that currently, until there's resilient decentralized Internet technology, Bitcoin can't be considered a silver bullet for financial freedom at times of tyranny. What would a person who went 100% on Bitcoin do right now in Kazakhstan, when they can't even convert it to fiat? And banks have stopped working there too, so only good old paper money change hands there.

the UN is trying to make the internet a basic human right. much like water.
where utility companies and governments cannot just stop citizens access to basic utilities on mass.

you may see temporary 'delays to service' or curfews or however you can word it. but if a government under UN rule were to permanently cut off access to utilities for all citizens. then that country can get into alot of trouble with the UN.

in the future you might see for instance if there was another US capital riot. US might temporarily switch off internet in washington neighbourhoods, to break communication methods of rioters. but trying to have a mass internet cut off of america entirely and permanently would result in UN putting sanctions on america until they re-establish internet connectivity.

The news coming from Kazakhstan(and the news about the Federal Reserve) definitely have some FUD value and they can definitely cause some panic across a part of the crypto traders.
Having the hashrate dropped isn't such a big deal,because the mining difficulty will be adjusted after a awhile.
Internet in Kazakhstan won't be down forever,but I'm not sure about the political situation in this country.
Perhaps the future government of Kazakhstan won't be so Bitcoin/crypto friendly and it might try to kick out all the Bitcoin/crypto miners of the country.Mostly because of the usual BTC hater arguments-wasting energy,damaging the environment,bla bla bla...
However,I'm just speculating about this.

The internet can not be shut down for ever, it can only last for a while and peculiar to a country or region like state, town or village, but your bitcoin remain your bitcoin, you are only the one that have the access to its seed phrase if using noncustododial wallet, you only have the control. It is still much better option to others in term of freedom and control.

I thought about this. Candidly speaking, some would want to convert to fiat but not possible for now. Both if banks are shot down also, even fiat is worst.

This is still centralized. Why not decentralized internet? In a way there can be nodes that provide proof of work and receive incentives for their contribution by provide service for robust decentralized internet, or something like that makeup. I just think this might not be possible earlier as the world is divided into countries.

I do not see any real link between the hashrate and the price, although it could be one of the reasons, but we all know that Bitcoin can change in that proportion without any convincing reason.

Internet outage in Kazakhstan may be a direct cause of the impact on the price, I did not think that there are many places of mining in that country, but what happened made me ask that if the governments decided to know the whereabouts of mining, perhaps cutting the Internet for several hours is enough to know the possibility of Bitcoin mining accurately?

Generally, over time many nodes will start broadcasting transactions across space without the need for internet from the local ISPs.

you can try taking that argument to ISP's, requesting them to revolt against government telecommunication regulation.. but part of their response is that some ISP operate in multiple countries and thus have multiple different government policies where by a rule in one does not apply in another so their not as centralised as you thought

EG t-mobile, Vodafone, Comcast
a US government can tell these companies to shut off access to its US customers. but this does not affect the UK,african customers.


even if doing so. by offering a service to customers for communication utility you then become a communication business which then puts you right back into the jurisdiction of communication regulations of the government the service is offered.

facebook is very much now under the thump of communication law. which is why they keep getting fined for not moderating illegal communications

I see this as an opportunity to buy more bitcoin or even other crypto currencies which has blown off for now. The thing is nothing is permanent in the crypto. Such kind of failures, drops, shuts has happened many times in the past and they have somehow affected the bitcoin prices. This may not be effect of hash rate drop but it’s just after effect of the news. In other words many millionaires see it as an opportunity to buy more crypto. They know it for real that crypto will restructure its base no matter what. Moreover, there is possibility that currently peeps will buy more this gaining huge liquidity in the market and pumping the price even higher.

This could be awsome if someone from Kazahstan come here and explain to us the current situation I heard that the Kazahstan government did shutdown the internet connection because of the bitcoin miners and some others are saying that's because of the gas price but the most important thing about this case is Kazahstan case is not really related to bitcoin price because as far as I know this can't affect the price like that much but I think us federal reserve is the main reason for the recent price dump.

the riots were caused by a strain on the FIAT economy due to car fuel prices doubling overnight..
the riots were organised by hundreds of people communicating over the internet to assemble in different places
the internet was switched off to cut-off communications between rioters

separately as an after affect(not cause/reason for the internet cut-off) the internet shutdown meant kazakh asic miners could not submit their hashwork to pools.

as for the price.
depending on country.. mining cost fits into a window of between $31k-$66k
the price can move between these numbers volatility depending on many emotional human decisions and effects.

the price dip is not due to a infrastructure impact of mining (affecting the window range) its just human speculation/media drama causing human emotional decision changes

Connection to the price drop? Maybe yes and no.

I'm more curious why there's a need to touch the internet if the rally is all about the gas prices. But if the connection to the price drop of bitcoin is due to the hash rate, then eventually, as usual, it will recover.

I didn't even know that there's riot and protests that happened there and if I haven't seen this thread, I'm total ignorant of the current political issue there.

Imho the hash rate drop after Kazakhstan internet cut-off is much smaller than expected.
Maybe the traders expected something much bigger (because then the rest of the miners would get much cheaper coins), maybe there's something deeper we are missing.

On the other hand, the fear index was already looking bad and some were probably on the verge of selling. I am almost sure that the Kazakhstan news and the price drop have convinced some more sell.
Is it a bear trap? Are we really in trouble? I don't know. But I expect the current price change not be a good indicator because the liquidity on the markets is low.

I really wonder where did he get that data.
Yesterday I posted this:


The current stats show:


In 96 blocks we lost 2 blocks compared to the previous pace so that's barely 2% , not 20%.

24 hours statics show (https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/blocks?q=time(2022-01-05%2009:13:57..2022-01-06%2009:13:57)) 138 blocks and  10 minutes and ~30 seconds block time, nowhere near something like   20%.

Aside from the announcement on the possible interest rate hikes in the USA, the situation in Kazakhstan right now is a major factor why we are seeing downward movements with Bitcoin. And these are just natural reactions by the market as buoyed by things that are or will be happening soon. Just like many years ago when news coming from China affected Bitcoin, this time around the focus shifted to USA and Kazakhstan as these two counties are now taking the lead in Bitcoin mining. Hope these things will go away soon so we can go back to normal days.

It's certainly frustrating, since there isn't a direct answer regarding what caused such drop. Is it concerning? Yes, is it worrying me? No, well, not yet. Waking up to such a drop is definitely scaring, I'm aiming for long-term returns, thus, I am not too worried yet.

Despite not being too affected by the situation, I'm hoping that the market recovers in the following weeks

From what I've read, the Internet connection seems to be the likeliest culprit. Kazakhstan became a huge mining center when China introduced its restrictions, and it's not surprising that something as big as a countrywide Internet shutdown would affect crypto mining operations. However, I think it's not as big of a deal, and I don't understand why the price suffered that much. After all, mining difficulty can correct itself, and it's not a threat to the network. So it's probably just FUD spreading over the news, and perhaps some people fear that mining will become impossible in Kazakhstan if these protests lead to more restrictions and last for a long time.

Many miners from moved from China to Kazahstan but they are now faced with internet shutdown issues and I suspect that government will increase price of electricity very soon.
This could be just one of many reasons for Bitcoin price correction, stocks are also down with other markets and economy worldwide is shaky and holding on glass legs.
There is also news about congressional subcommittee preparing oversight hearing environmental impact on on Bitcoin mining...
Better prepare and hold on for one bumpy ride in next few months and not only for Bitcoin hashrate/price.

20% still looks much better for those who want to create panic, and the opportunity is literally served to them in the best possible way. All these stories about how Kazakhstan became a crypto stronghold for all the exiled crypto miners from China have finally come to fruition for those who want blood on the streets.

Weak hands always fall first, followed by those a little stronger, and smart ones then buy and rub their hands because they know how to make a profit. We have already seen all this countless times, the only difference is that this time it is not China but Kazakhstan.

where did these two read 20%

topic creator shows 12%

also 12% is not based on counting blocks.. its based on looking at the hashrate change from ~180 to ~160exa

so seems stompix is picking an argument that does not exist, based on numbers never mentioned by topic creator in relation to block count

And franky1 strikes again...
The hashrate is not calculated based on counting blocks, yeah right.

Hey ****, I have news for you:
The source for that claim is ycharts (https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_network_hash_rate), who get the data from blokchain.info.
And if you would have ever in your life bothered to read something you would read this just below the hashrate estimator on blockchain.info
https://www.blockchain.com/charts/hash-rate


Understand?  Of course, you don't, what a stupid question.
There is no counter of the hashrate like the number of fapings pornhub, the daily hashrate is determined by the number of blocks mined during that day, which right now is 135 for the last 24h, and with the basic mathematical skills even you should have you can see it is -6.25, not 13%, not 18% not whatever you picture in your wet dreams.
So follow up with what others have told you and find a ditch, the sooner the better!

again read the topic creators post.

it never mentioned 20% like you dream of... nor 13% nor 18% like you think i dream of (yet i never said 13 or 18)
it said clearly 12%

so you are making up 13%.18%.20% numbers that were never said by anyone bar you

funny part is stompix first said "barely 2%,, now saying 6.25%"
care to pull a new random number that was never mentioned in the topic creators post??

..
oh and the image in the topic creators post. is not from blockchains network hashrate..
its from looking at the number of hashes(asics work) of each pool.
it actually lists each pools work load.

but thanks again for playing. maybe try to use the information provided rather than make something up then double down on your made up numbers by finding another irrelevant thing.

the numbers were not based on blockchain.info network rate estimate
heck even blockchain are honest enough that it uses estimates and guestimates and assumptions.. so understand not to use those guestimate assumption sites as your proof/counter argument, especially when they are not used by others who use other sources with more accurate math, stats

Kazakhstan was all over crypto twitter today. From people making threads explaining that its not about Borat to the fact that its the 9th largest country by area in the world, and land-locked at that. There are speculations of this being some sort of power move from the US but the explanation is quite simple that the people are tired of their 30+ year old dictatorship.

So apparently the miners cannot mine. While this drop in hashrate doesn't mean anything but Bitcoin is like that. It needs a trigger to move. Things have already been on a downtrend for quite sometime and this miner news was probably just a catalyst. This will never cease to amaze.

I will just DCA a bit to shore up my little BTC hodlings.

Because my dear franky1 the block time is not exactly 10 minutes (did you know that?), we have different times between blocks (did you know that?), that's why we need adjustments (we have those, you know) , that's why the situation changes from one moment to another.
To give a clueless individual like you a hint of that,  look at December 30th and you will see that the hashrate went from 175 to 143 and the next day only to go up to 179.
Probably because of the revolution in Bartovia that cut 12% of whatever.

So that your little mind could understand the difference, in the period 7 hours ago there were only 3 blocks mined in 73 minutes, this variation alone could trigger a 3% change in the reported hashrate. Got it?
So, next time do your homework..... before going to kindergarten, the teacher won't get mad at you anymore, it won't slap you and you will not come here angry at everyone and claiming bullshit just to feel special. You're not!


What has size to do with anything?
Congo is the 11th and I swear I don't remember a single thread about it on this forum.

fixed that for you :D your welcome (grammatically incorrect on purpose of comedical slavic accent)

as for stompix.. i emboldened and underlined a part of my last post.
might want to read it, and then look at the topic creators first post..

the stats are not from blockchains bad math guestimates.. (you!!!! love to use guessing/estimate sites as your stats source)
the stats are straight from pools own workload reports (actual hashrates)
the topic creators post mentions nothing about block numbers, nor network rate. nor difficulty nor blocktimes

..
edit after checking on a few things:
other topics elsewhere in the forum. with other users opinions seems to be where stompix seems to be getting his random numbers
(13%) https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5380126.0
(15%-20%) https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5380053.0

but those are other topics. involving other people

Thanks for making this thread. I was searching for a reason why BTC fell so sharply in such a short span of time and now I know the possible reasons.
Either it is the internet going down in Kazakh or the Feds increasing interest rates. In both the cases I think it is a temporary thing.
If bitcoin price has dropped because the internet is down due to protests then the price will increase as soon as the internet is up and running again.
If bitcoin price is down because of the increase in interest rates as the feds have announced then the interest rates will surely decrease in a few months or later.
So may be by then bitcoin price will start increasing again. So why to panic sell for such low prices when we have a new ATH to achieve.

Kazakhstan has increasing hashrate since the Great Migration from China but hashrate rises up and falls down. It does not make sense to panic only because hashrates fall down a little bit. Take into consideration that hashrate from Kazakhstan does not too big like from China mainland before the migration.

We see many capitulation on hashrate since 2009 but in long run, hashrate is upwards and it will continue like that.

Well when the price drops the last time the Chinese government started to ban crypto mining, the hash rate really drop so hard and so is the price and it went for months before we finally saw some bounce back to the hash rate and the price itself.

And maybe prior to the news, the sentiments is really turning into a bearish one and then waking up seeing the price going down hard, there could be some noob investors who suddenly push the sell button because they can't take the heat of seeing their portfolio going down.

We should get used to these fluctuations every time we wake up. I've experienced these drops several times after waking up and yeah, it's shocking and not a good morning as it may seems.

But what's concerning is the situation of their economy and the people there, we know that bitcoin will eventually recover and no matter how many FUDs or factors that makes it low, it will really go up again.

Once after the ban from China, miners moved towards the neighbouring countries where they find the logistics to be easily done. As a result most of the mining firms got relocated to Kazakhstan, whereas mining machines got sold to Iran. As a result more hash is being generated from Kazakhstan contributing 18% of the global hash generated.

In the long run the network turns strong with the increase of hash. Now this has affected the entire network. Before the shut down of China, Kazakhstan contributed just 8% to the global hash. As mentioned once again the network will be powered once prevailing situation turns good.

It makes sense the issue with bitcoin mining hashrate in Kazakhstan impacted the price negatively added to the news coming from the USA regards the increasement in interest rates by the Federal Reserve. When you have two important factors like those happening simultaneously, you can expect pessimism in the market without any doubts. And honestly it wasn't so bad as it could, because even though bitcoin has hit 39,000$ today, it immediately returned to 41,000$ without any difficult. It means such events impacted bitcoin negatively, but not so negatively to put it in a bad position like the one we have seen during the last bear season some years ago.

the internet is dead in kazakhtan, it can affect the price of bitcoin, but I am very sure it is only temporary, the government cannot turn off the internet for a long time, because if they turn off the internet for a long time, it is certain that they will receive sanctions from UN, because the internet has now become a staple food, if there is no internet all activities will be cut off..

Does Kazakhstan Holds big amount of Bitcoin ? i mean is there more people there accumulate and uses Bitcoin in daily manner? because if not then what can be the big effect of this to the world of crypto ?
though I find this issue being the reason why the market dumped recently , or this is just  a coincidentally ?
but what ever the real reason yet it happened and now the market is dumping badly .

Just pray that the tension in the country subsides if not ends because that's the reason why the country was plunged into an Internet blackout because the protesters are using the Internet as a means of communication and coordinating their attacks which the government found problematic, now I don't know which side is the right one in this case but I pray that the one who is right will prevail. This also made me show that Kazakhstan is a low-key the one of the big contributors in hashrate although I am not surprised as it's near China.

Internet in Kazakhstan is back and there is prediction that Bitcoin mining farms there will return for normal operations soon.

Personally, I think the chaos in Kazakhstan will last for a few months and it won't end too soon. So I expect big mining farms in this nation will make migrations to neighbor nations or to the USA.

Major Mining Pools’ Bitcoin Hashrate Nears Recovery as Kazakhstan’s Internet Is Partially Restored (https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2022/01/10/major-mining-pools-bitcoin-hashrate-nears-recovery-as-kazakhstans-internet-is-partially-restored/). As business companies, they should not bet that the chaos in Kazakhstan will be completely resolved.

I know that the price can get affected when something shifts like that, but I do wonder if we are looking into this a tad bit too much. The drop does correlate with predictions of price drops and us entering the bear market. As predictions like that are not an exact (and precise) science, it wouldn't be too hard to imagine that it could be off by a couple of months. If anything maybe the second winter with covid had more impact than this. If it did affect it, I doubt it did substantially or that the drop will stop if the situation in Khazakstan stabilizes.

I think we are going to see a nice bounce back now that the internet has been restored in Kasachstan. But then again, the hashrate did not really drop all that much, so mostly the drop in price, as far as I see it, was due to a mass panic about the hashrate dropping that turned out to be nothing drastic. As always, these things are based on fud and its never worth selling your coin due to such circumstances.

I don't think it's the only reason, this is one of several other reasons why bitcoin dropped to this level:
- Because the Fed decided to raise interest rates in 2022
- Because of the MtGox case where about 100,000 BTC was pumped out
- Finally, because the Kazakh government cut off the Internet in the country, which led to the suspension of miners there.
I think that all these reasons combined led to this sudden Dump of Bitcoin, of course the whales will not miss this great opportunity from their hands and will try to pressure the market more and more.

Although internet has certainly not been restored to how it was a week ago, before the events, there seem to be some improvements:


A similar chart can be seen using Cloudflare’s Radar (bears different selectable timeframe filters):
https://radar.cloudflare.com/kz?date_filter=last_7_days

There are some timeframes where the service seems to be up and running. I wonder if the miners are keeping the equipment’s off, or whether they are back online during the available, yet intermittent, windows of internet service.

You are certainly right, but I can add to this list another possible reason for the current dump in the price of BTC. About a month ago, a large centralized exchange, Bitmart, was hacked. The criminal withdrew Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies worth about 196 million dollars. Perhaps the hacker has sent the stolen coins to mixers and is now selling BTC on different CEXes and DEXes.

As for the aforementioned Asian country that has a lot of miners, I do not see a significant drop in the hash rate on the chart. On December 31, 2021, the hash rate was 155 EH/s. Three days later, on January 2, 2022, the hash rate increased to 203 EH/s. Currently, the hash rate is 177 EH/s and looks stable.

Therefore, I think that the temporary Internet shutdown caused by the recent riot in this country hasn't had much of an impact on the global cryptocurrency market.