When Bitcoin's least efficient miners can no longer cover their electricity bill, they switch their machines off, and the network's total hash rate drops. Hash Ribbons catches this by comparing a 30-day and a 60-day moving average of hash rate: the 30-day average dipping below the 60-day flags that capitulation phase, and it crossing back above has historically marked the machines coming back online as conditions improve.
What hash rate actually measures
Hash rate is the total computational power the network's miners are collectively pointing at solving blocks, typically measured in exahashes per second (EH/s) — roughly 950 EH/s as of mid-2026, up from under 20 EH/s at the 2020 halving. It's a direct, measured quantity derived from block-solving difficulty rather than a modeled estimate.
The two-average crossover
Hash Ribbons plots a 30-day and a 60-day simple moving average of hash rate on the same chart. When the faster 30-day average dips below the slower 60-day average, it indicates hash rate has been falling recently relative to its own trend — consistent with less efficient miners (older hardware, higher electricity costs) turning off their machines because it's no longer profitable to run them at current price and difficulty levels. That's the "capitulation" phase. When the 30-day average later crosses back above the 60-day average, it signals hash rate has stabilized and started recovering, historically associated with the weakest miners having already exited and stronger ones remaining.
Why miner capitulation gets watched at all
Miner capitulation phases have historically clustered near price lows, on the logic that miner distress (forced selling to cover costs, or simply less new supply pressure from fewer active machines) tends to coincide with the tail end of a broader market washout more than its middle. That's a correlation observed across a handful of cycles; nothing about it guarantees the mechanism repeats.