A Bitcoin mining crackdown in China and a sharp decline in hashrate are behind the Bitcoin slump, according to analysts.
Bitcoin miners in China’s Xinjiang province are unplugging following another crackdown by Beijing this week. As many as 400,000 mining machines have already gone offline, causing a slump in hashrates.
Bitcoin is going down because selling pressure is stronger and coming from deeper sources, said analyst Bull Theory on Wednesday.
“One major reason is China’s mining crackdown coming back into focus,” they added.
Network hashrate has dropped by around 8%, which is a large move considering that China still controls roughly 14% of global hash power, they observed.
Asian Whales Selling BTC
The analyst added that Asian OG holders likely began selling weeks ago in anticipation of renewed restrictions, and on-chain data confirms increased long-term holder selling over the past couple of months. There has also been a miner capitulation as closed mining farms must sell BTC reserves and equipment to cover their losses.
Additionally, Asian exchanges such as Binance, Bybit, and OKX show consistent net spot selling through Q4, while US exchanges such as Coinbase show continued net buying, they added.
“This is not panic selling. This is supply changing hands. And price usually stays weak until that pressure is gone.”
WHY IS BITCOIN STILL DUMPING WHILE INSTITUTIONS ARE MAKING BILLION DOLLAR BUYS?
Bitcoin is not going down because fundamentals are weak.
It is going down because selling pressure is stronger and coming from deeper sources.
One major reason is China’s mining crackdown coming… pic.twitter.com/QBAG8PKAKh
— Bull Theory (@BullTheoryio) December 17, 2025
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Bitcoin’s hashrate has dropped 10% from around 1,160 EH/s in October to ~1,045 EH/s in December, marking three consecutive negative difficulty adjustments, reported Luxor on Wednesday.
They noted that the trend was driven by three factors:
“Declining Bitcoin prices pushing legacy hardware into negative margins, regional enforcement actions removing capacity from major mining regions, and rising winter energy costs triggering seasonal curtailment across North America.”
This decline in hashrate is driven by a convergence of price compression, seasonal energy costs, and targeted regulatory pressure, which are all squeezing marginal miners simultaneously.
Additionally, hashprice, which quantifies the amount a miner can expect to earn from a specific quantity of hashrate, is at an all-time low of $0.036 per terahash per second per day, according to Luxor. Diminishing returns and increasing costs put more pressure on miners to sell.
BTC Continues to Fall
Bitcoin is bearing the brunt of this hashrate slump as it continues to weaken.
Aside from another manipulated pump-and-dump by derivatives degens, the asset is down on the day, having failed to reclaim $87,000.
It was trading at $86,560 at the time of writing, at the lower bounds of its range-bound channel that formed in late November.
