Miners continue to invest funds, and the total computing power of Bitcoin network hits a new record high

According to foreign media reports on March 3, on Monday, miners processed blocks on the Bitcoin network with a total hash rate of 136 exahash per second (EH/s), exceeding the network's all-time record. This record-breaking achievement was achieved when the price of Bitcoin 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 136-145 EH/s on Monday

Since the invention of the innovative payment network, the hash rate has been an important indicator of the security and health of the network. In simple terms, a hash is the output of the hash function applied to the Bitcoin software. When Bitcoin miners work on new blocks, they use their processing power (hash rate, or computing power) to increase their chances of receiving a block reward. The total hash rate, or the sum of the processing power of all the mining machines participating in the Bitcoin network, is a measure of how many hash functions are used to find a block. In late January 2016, the Bitcoin network's hash rate reached 1 exahash per second (EH/s) for the first time. Since then, the Bitcoin network's hash rate has increased 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.

Bitcoin hash rate as of March 2, 2020, according to a chart from Blockchain.com

Over the past few years, global investment in Bitcoin mining has remained strong, and many new mining pools have been added around the world. For example, Peter Thiel-backed mining pool Layer1 recently began operations in West Texas, USA. The company has raised more than $50 million from investors such as Peter Thiel, Digital Currency Group, and Shasta Ventures. Layer1 aims to expand its operations to 20 megawatts (MW) this year, and there are many similar mining projects in Texas. Last year, Bitmain also revealed that it would build a 300 MW mining plant in Rockdale, Texas, and put it into production with a capacity of 25 MW.

Riot Blockchain revealed in early February that it had purchased more than 1,000 Bitmain mining machines for its Oklahoma mining pool. Riot Blockchain’s mining pool plans to have a total throughput of 300 megawatts per second, and the company said the new batch of mining machines will be turned on immediately.

Meanwhile, Xtra Bitcoin announced in February that it would build a 2.5-megawatt mining facility and plans to increase capacity to 10 megawatts. Digihost said it has a 70,000-square-foot campus in Buffalo, New York, with 12,895 bitcoin mining machines totaling 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.

Additionally, the hash rates of other SHA256 networks have also increased. Since December 2018, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has increased its hash rate 4x from 1EH/s to 3.5~5EH/s. In December 2018, BSV had a hash rate of about 1.3EH/s, and by 2020, that number has increased 1.3x to about 2.5~3EH/s. Together, these three networks make up the entire SHA256 hash rate, which is one of the largest computing networks ever created. In 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto launched the Bitcoin network, which made significant progress in exahash computing. But people often wonder what exahash is, and all the other interesting terms bitcoiners use, like 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, and 1PH/s is 1 quadrillion hashes per second. A hash rate of 1EH/s is about 100 trillion hashes per second. Currently, Bitcoin's network hash rate is less than a quarter of 1ZH/s, and 1Zetahash is 500 exahashes. At a speed of 140EH/s, the Bitcoin network can dig out 20 times more sand from the earth every second, roughly estimated to be 750 million trillion grains.

The record of 136~145EH/s is a milestone. Every time the hash rate of the network increases, it becomes more difficult to launch a malicious attack on the system. For example, the mining pool Poolin mined the 619845th block a few minutes ago. If a malicious miner wants to change the block, it will have to spend $775936 to attack within 24 hours. At the same time, he has to compete with all honest miners to mine the next block. Every time an honest miner finds a new block, it slows down the attacker's attack. Therefore, the cost of malicious mining will be very expensive.

The chart on the left is from Fork.lol, and 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 corner is the calculated average of the Bitcoin hash rate.

Many speculators believe that the increase in hash rate means that miners are very confident in the future of SHA256 networks such as Bitcoin. In order to obtain 12.5 bitcoins and the fees associated with block transactions, miners invest a lot of money to verify transactions. When the Bitcoin halving solstice arrives, the block rewards received by miners of all three SHA256 networks will be reduced by half, and the block rewards of Bitcoin, BCH and BSV will all be reduced to 6.25 coins per new block.

The above data shows that this game touches on many interests of mining entities. It is estimated that after the block halving, 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 progression of miners increasing the hash rate, and no major mining pool has given up increasing its capital investment in more than ten years. After the Bitcoin halving, all eyes will be on the further development of the hash rate, as this metric has been a reliable indicator of the overall security and growth of the network.