On October 18, 2011, Bitcoin value plummeted across exchanges – to a level where it costs more to “mine” them than they are worth.  BTC =$2.27

At this point in time, 7.48 million bitcoin had been mined of the 21 million bitcoin that will ever be released into circulation.

The mining problem was caused due to rising hashrates, ie, each computer hash being generated made it harder for the next one to generate (more and more complicated calculations for block confirmation). Miners at the time were stuck in a cycle of upgrading their systems to increase computing power, profiting for a few days, only to have the network catch up and detect the increase in power, and adjusting itself down, forcing miners to have to invest in more processing power.

That week in 2011, the network’s hashrate was around 8.596 TH/s or 8,596,000,000,000 hashes per second. While the hashrate was much less than today, it was still nine-hundred-six million percent (906,593,161.72%) higher in 2011 than on January 5, 2009.

This was seen by many as a cycle that was not sustainable. Many miners had to stop mining operations altogether because it became unaffordable and unprofitable.

This is a 1 /10 Limited Edition NFT. This artwork is limited to only 10 NFTs available for purchase.

Art details: Original digital hand painted motion art portrait (NOT Computer Generated). The ticker tape displays the historical daily price indexes recorded on this day.

Dimensions: 720 x 1080, 19.2 MB, Duration: 15 seconds

Created with Corel Painter, Adobe After Effects & Adobe Premiere

Artist: Denise Holt