How Winter Storm Fern Slowed Down the Bitcoin Network

The Bitcoin network hashrate, which is the amount of computing power that is pointed at the crypto network, saw a massive decline over the weekend, falling from just over 1,000 exahashes per second on Friday to around 687 exahashes per second on Sunday, according to BitInfoCharts. As a result, blocks of Bitcoin transactions were mined a bit more slowly than the target rate of one every ten minutes.

While the Bitcoin network resets the difficulty associated with finding new blocks…