snow storm US East Coast - no electricity, no mining

[disclaimer201]

I wonder if the unexpected snow storm in the US with massive power outages will have an effect on the overall hashrate (and perhaps new difficulty?

[Tim The Enchanter]

Is the black market effected by the real one? I imagine if a ton of drug dealers are held up in a snow storm and can't use their computers then the supply would go down so the price would go up? Although I imagine a ton of buyers also live in that area so the demand also goes down?

Maybe other dealers should just take advantage of this and raise their prices?

[fourd00rgtz]

I do believe such a thing happened over the summer when hurricane Irene hit, I think it caused a tiny difficulty drop, but could have been due to the giant pullback from June price highs.

[Anillos]

I wonder if the unexpected snow storm in the US with massive power outages will have an effect on the overall hashrate (and perhaps new difficulty?

Not, there are lots of people mining outside US.
I think that the impact on difficulty was minimal.

The difficulty is lowering because mining is not profitable, and is not a good idea to spend money on mining unless you have a great interest in BTC (It's not a good idea to mine BTC to earn $). Also, there are miners interested in BTC, that slow down their rigs to reduce the cost of mining.

[avoid3d]

I believe more than 20% of hashing is botnets at this point