For some, Bitcoin is clinically dead right now. It is true if we only look at the price of Bitcoin, the story is not glorious. And yet… The Bitcoin network is far from inactive. Moreover, he has even signed a new record which is worth of interest.
The Bitcoin hashrate has exploded
Bitcoin’s new record belongs to its hashrate. What about it?
What is a hashrate?
The hashrate is a way measuring blockchain activity. In fact, we could define the hashrate as the speed of the hashes. What is the hash?
The hash (or hash) is a mathematical function which converts any file into a sequence of hexadecimal bits. The hash is at the heart of Bitcoin mining, that is, the work of validating transactions on the blockchain.
Simply put, this is how Bitcoin mining works. When a transaction block is filled, miners on the network compete to validate the block and receive a reward. However, to validate a block, you have to find the hash corresponding to the block. Minors must therefore try many times to calculate the correct hash. For miners, it’s all about speed. The goal is therefore to be able to calculate as many hashes in a minimum time.
The unit that measures this is the hashrate hash speed. It is generally expressed in Eh/s, that is to say in quitillion hashes per second.
Record hashrate on October 11th
On October 11, the hashrate of Bitcoin reached the a record of 325.11 PE/s. For comparison, you should know that the hashrate was around 150 PE/s at the same time in 2021. Over the past year, the hashrate has steadily progressed to a new high in October.
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Increase hashrate, so what?
The hashrate is a key indicator for Bitcoin. In fact, the increase in hashrate leads us to draw two interesting conclusions.
The Bitcoin blockchain is in shape
First of all, it has a high hashrate a sign of vitality. In fact, this shows that Bitcoin miners are very active and calculate a large number of hashes.
Miners remain loyal despite the difficulty of mining
More interestingly, this means that Bitcoin miners are not discouraged by increasing mining difficulty. What do you mean?
You should know that the Bitcoin blockchain a a parameter that adjusts the mining difficulty. The goal is that block validation speed stays around 10 minutes at all times.
As explained above, mining is primarily a matter of computing power. The more technology develops, the easier it is for miners to perform many calculations. For keep a validation time of about 10 minutestherefore the mining difficulty must be increased.
This is what happened at the beginning of last week. The IS Bitcoin mining difficulty increased by 13.55% ! One might expect that this would encourage some miners to throw in the towel. Especially since this comes in the context of the energy crisis where mining is becoming less and less profitable. But not at all! The hashrate record shows that miner activity is still intense !
Currently, a block of Bitcoin transactions is validated approximately every 9 minutes. So the miners are “too fast” compared to the 10 minute target. Therefore, a further increase in mining difficulty is expected in the near future.
