Foreign media: Winter storms in the United States have extended Bitcoin block times, and miners are reducing output to alleviate pressure on the power grid

According to The Block, the widespread winter storm "Fernan" in the United States has forced Bitcoin miners to significantly reduce production to alleviate pressure on the power grid. The hashrate of the Foundry USA mining pool has dropped by about 60% since last Friday, from 328 EH/s to 139 EH/s. Approximately 200 EH/s of hashrate has gone offline across the network, causing Bitcoin block production time to extend from the standard 10 minutes to 12.4 minutes.

This extreme weather has left over a million residents without power, and grid operators have issued energy-saving alerts. Other North American mining pools, such as Luxor, have also seen a noticeable decline in hashrate. The next Bitcoin difficulty adjustment is expected to decrease by about 15% to restore the pace of block production.