Bitcoin may have seen a drop of 8.0% in May, yet its network activity remained strong. The daily network hash rate – an important indicator of network health – continued to rise for the fifth consecutive month to a record high.
Reginald Smith, a JPMorgan analyst, stated in a Friday research note that the funding available for rack space might lead to a slowdown in the hash rate growth, lagging behind Bitcoin’s price appreciation.
The 13 U.S. listed miners that JPMorgan tracks experienced an aggregate increase of 5.0% last month in terms of market cap, reaching $6.7 billion.
Mining difficulty – another metric usually tied to Bitcoin’s hash rate – reached a new record high as well. Additionally, the transaction fees spiked to over 5 Bitcoin per block mined in early May, which should bring a slight improvement in second quarter earnings for the mining industry.
However, transaction fees have now returned to around 0.5 BTC per block mined, close to the historic average. JPMorgan analysts recently suggested that Bitcoin should be trading at $45,000.
