Bitcoin’s hashrate has been acting strangely over the past few days. In the past two days alone, bitcoin’s hashrate has jumped 35%. Bitcoin’s hashrate has reached 61.8 EH/s.

This is a big deal. It means a huge amount of hashrate – or bitcoin miners – just started mining BTC. Or, it means miners are solving hashes more quickly. Or it could mean a bit of both. Bitcoin mining activity has significantly increased, and that means someone felt bitcoin mining could still be hugely profitable in 2018.

There are a few possible reasons for the sudden rise in bitcoin hashrate:

Someone just launched a major new mining operation

Major BCH miners have switched to BTC mining over the last few days amidst BCH’s controversy

Someone created a vastly more efficient mining chip that blows popular miners like the S7 or S9 out of the water

Some claim that a major electronics company – like Samsung – just launched their rumored mining chips. Others claim someone invented a quantum computer.

What seems most likely is that some new company just activated its miners. Some mining operation just went active somewhere in the world, adding tremendous hashrate to the BTC network. Nevertheless, this is still a lot of hashrate to add to the network in a short period of time.

What isn’t likely is that BCH miners have switched over to BTC. Sure, smaller miners may have made the switch from BCH to BTC, given that mining both blockchains is a similar process. However, the recent spike in the BTC network is twice the entire hashrate of BCH. Even if every BCH miner switched over to BTC mining, we wouldn’t see the increase like we saw this past week.

Is a New All Time High Coming Soon?

Some take this hashrate news to mean that an all time high is coming shortly.

“Based on my HR [hashrate] analysis, new ATH [all time high] incoming. $28,000 still in play,” explains Max Keiser (@MaxKeiser) on Twitter.

Based on my HR analysis, new ATH incoming. $28,000 still in play. pic.twitter.com/hYgPti1cqn — Max Keiser (@maxkeiser) August 28, 2018

Keiser posted a chart showing BTC’s hashrate jumping over the past two days. It shows a huge spike in mining activity.

It’s not totally clear why Max Keiser feels an all time high is upcoming. When bitcoin’s hashrate spikes 35% in two days, that means you’re making 35% less than you were two days ago, assuming your mining hashrate has remained equal.

Nevertheless, there is a silver lining to the boost in mining hashrate: it indicates that bitcoin mining is still profitable. Someone has clearly invested an enormous amount of resources into bitcoin mining in August 2018.

What’s going on with bitcoin’s hashrate? We’re really not sure – but it’s certainly something to monitor over the coming days and weeks.