Miners continue to invest funds, Bitcoin's entire network computing power hits a record high

According to foreign media reports on March 3, on Monday, miners' processing power on the Bitcoin network exceeded the historical record of the network, with a total hash rate of 136 exahash (EH / s) per second. This record-breaking result was achieved after Bitcoin price fell below $ 9,000 last week. Bitcoin's hash rate has increased 135 times in four years, and this growth trend will not slow down in the short term.

(Image source: flickr )

Bitcoin's hash rate reached 136 ~ 145EH / s on Monday

Since the invention of Bitcoin, an innovative payment network, the hash rate has been an important indicator of network security and health. In simple terms, a hash is the output of a hash function applied to Bitcoin software. When Bitcoin miners are mining new blocks, they use their processing power (hash rate, or computing power) to increase their chances of getting block rewards. The sum of the entire hash rate, that is, the sum of the processing capabilities of all mining machines participating in mining on the Bitcoin network, is a measure of how many hash functions are used in order to find a block. At the end of January 2016, the hash rate of the Bitcoin network reached 1 exahash (EH / s) per second for the first time. Since then, the hash rate of the Bitcoin network has grown exponentially. Data from Blockchain.com and Fork.Lol show that on March 2, 2020, the average hash rate of Bitcoin was between 136 and 145 EH / s.

• Report: 26 crypto exchanges and escrow providers such as Coinbase have been targeted by new Trojan viruses
• Announcement on the implementation of blockchain electronic ordinary invoices by the State Administration of Taxation
• Bitcoin Secret History: Who Was The First Time To Contact Satoshi Nakamoto?

Bitcoin hash rate according to Blockchain.com chart on March 2, 2020

Over the past few years, global investment in bitcoin mining has maintained a strong momentum, and many new mining pools have been added globally. For example, the mining pool Layer1 supported by Peter Thiel has recently begun operations in West Texas, USA. The company raised more than $ 50 million from investors including Peter Thiel, Digital Currency Group and Shasta Ventures. Layer1 aims to expand its operations to 20 megawatts (MW) this year. In addition, Texas has many similar mining projects. Last year, Bitmain also revealed that it will build a 300 MW mine in Rockdale, Texas, and put it into operation at a capacity of 25 MW.

Riot Blockchain revealed in early February this year that it has purchased more than 1,000 Bitmain mining machines for mining pools in Oklahoma. Riot Blockchain's mining pool plans to reach a total Haixi rate of 300 megawatts per second, and the company said that a new batch of mining machines will be turned on immediately.

At the same time, Xtra Bitcoin announced in February this year the establishment of a 2.5 MW mine and plans to increase the capacity to 10 MW. Digihost claims that the company has a 70,000-square-foot campus in Buffalo, New York, with 12,895 bitcoin miners, and a total of 17.5 megawatts of computing power. New mining activities are also emerging in Central Asia. The United States, Canada, and many other countries are pushing up the hash rate of the Bitcoin network.

In addition, the hash rate of other SHA256 networks has also increased. Since December 2018, the hash rate of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has increased from 1EH / s to 3.5 ~ 5EH / s, which has increased 4 times. In December 2018, the hash rate of BSV was about 1.3EH / s, and by 2020, this number has increased 1.3 times, about 2.5 ~ 3EH / s. Together, these three networks make up the entire SHA256 hash rate, and it is one of the largest computing networks ever created. In 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto launched the Bitcoin network and made significant progress in terms of tens of billions of calculations. But people often want to know what exahash is, and all other interesting terms used by bitcoiners, such as khash, megahash, gigahash, terahash, and petahash.

BCH hash rate, March 2, 2020

The Exahash era continues

1 kH / s is 1000 hashes per second, 1 MH / s is about 1 million hashes per second, 1GH / s is 1 billion hashes per second, 1TH / s is equal to 1 trillion hashes per second, 1PH / s Is 1 trillion hashes per second. The hash rate in units of 1EH / s is about 100 billion hashes per second. Currently, Bitcoin's network hash rate is less than about a quarter of 1ZH / s, and 1Zetahash is 500 exahash. Calculated at a speed of 140EH / s, the Bitcoin network can dig up 20 times more sand on the earth per second, which is roughly estimated to be 750 billion billion grains.

The record of 136 ~ 145EH / s is a milestone. Every time the network hash rate becomes larger, it will become more difficult to carry out malicious attacks on the system. For example, the mining pool Poolin mined the 619845 block a few minutes ago. If a malicious miner wants to change the block, it will have to spend $ 775,936 in an attack within 24 hours. At the same time, he has to be honest with all Of miners compete to dig out the next block. Whenever an honest miner discovers a new block, the attacker's attack behavior will be slowed down, so the price paid for malicious mining will be very expensive.

The chart on the left is from Fork.lol. The data shows that on March 2, 2020, the hash rate climbed to 145 exahase per second. The chart in the upper right corner is from Bitinfocharts.com, and the chart in the lower right is the calculated average hash rate of Bitcoin.

Many speculators believe that the increase in hash rate means that miners are very confident about the future of SHA256 networks like Bitcoin. In order to obtain 12.5 bitcoins and fees related to block transactions, miners have invested a lot of money to verify transactions. When Bitcoin is halved until the day arrives, the block rewards received by all three miners of the SHA256 network will be halved, and the block rewards of Bitcoin, BCH and BSV will be reduced by 6.25 coins per new block.

The above data shows that this game has touched many interests of mining entities. It is estimated that after the block is halved, the price of each bitcoin needs to rise to more than $ 12,000 for bitcoin miners to be profitable. So far, the Bitcoin network has witnessed the natural process of miners increasing hash rates, and for more than a decade, no large mining pool has given up on increasing capital investment. After Bitcoin is halved, everyone will focus on the further development of the hash rate, as this indicator has been a reliable indicator of the overall security and growth of the network.

We will continue to update Blocking; if you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us!