F2Pool founder estimates that 600k bitcoin miners have shut down in the past two weeks

According to Shixing Mao, founder of F2pool, the third-largest bitcoin mining pool, between 600,000 and 800,000 bitcoin miners have shut down since mid-November. Mao said his estimates take into account the total network hashrate drop and the average hash power of older mining machines. Furthermore, Mao explains that multiple factors contributed to the drop in hashrates. These include the recent market decline following the bitcoin cash hard fork; an increase in electricity cost in China; and that Chinese mining manufacturers are upgrading their products, which makes old machines uncompetitive. According to data from blockchain.info, the Bitcoin network's hashrates dropped from ~51 million tera hashes per second on Nov. 01 to 41 million on Nov. 24 – a decline of nearly 20%. (Source: CoinDesk)