(BTC) and the U.S. equity markets fell sharply on Jan. 5, reacting negatively to the minutes from the Federal Reserve’s December FOMC meeting, which showed that the Members expect to see a reduction in the balance sheetYou can start when the Fed increases interest rates beginning in 2022.

Adding to the negative sentiment was the shutdown of the world’s second-biggest Bitcoin mining hub in Kazakhstan, where the internet has been shut down following massive protests by citizens. The result was a drop of approximately 13.4% in the Bitcoin network’s overall hash rateFrom 205,000 petahash/second (PH/s), to 177.330 PH/s.