Requiem For A Mine

If Bitcoin miners are bankrupting or shutting down, the transaction bandwidth should shrink and process time should increase.

This is a comparison of Bitcoin transactions per day (traffic) to processing time.  The May, 2022 spike was the big sell-off when BTC price fell 20% in a few days.  The peak of 316K transactions per day had a transaction time of 440 minutes.   The FTX debacle in November is similar but...  11% less traffic (280k transactions)  had 28% longer transaction time (565 minutes).

Notice the past week.  Transaction time rises steadily with fewer transactions.

Most "crypto analysts" still think of Bitcoin as a discrete retail product but as I've said numerous times, it is a network which currently has $16 billion in energy costs.  That's constant regardless of the number of miners.   But the cost per miner changes.   Imagine six men carrying a 600 lb casket, and then one of them stumbles.   The other five suddenly carry 120 lbs each instead of 100.

Confirmation time varies too much to be sure yet, but I think it's increasing.