Effects of China ban: Bitcoin network did not skip a single beat. Zero downtime. Bitcoin mining became more globalized, more renewable.

This spring, an entire country – which signified 54% of bitcoin's total hashrate – went offline, and bitcoin didn't miss a beat.

"There was no downtime whatsoever to the bitcoin network. That's actually the smartest part of the bitcoin software: the difficulty adjustment," said bitcoin mining engineer Brandon Arvanaghi.

This feature of the bitcoin code is a critical part of its network architecture.

"We have seen the bottom of the hashrate decline, and it is nothing but up from here," said Mike Colyer, CEO of digital currency company Foundry, which helped bring over $300 million of mining equipment into North America.

Bitcoin difficulty back on the rise again