Bitcoin Hashrate

About the Metric

Hashrate measures the total computational power used to mine and process transactions on the Bitcoin network. It represents how many calculations per second the network can perform.

The term "hash" refers to the cryptographic puzzle-solving operation miners perform. Each "hash" is an attempt to find a valid block by creating a cryptographic digest of a block's header.

As of May 2025, Bitcoin's network hashrate exceeds 998 Exahashes per second (EH/s) -that's 990 quintillion calculations every second, making it the most powerful computing network ever built.

Significance

Network Security: Higher hashrate means greater security. To attack the Bitcoin network through a "51% attack," malicious actors would need to control more than half of the total hashrate-increasingly implausible as hashrate grows.

Economic Incentives: Miners invest substantial capital in equipment and electricity, creating strong economic incentives to support rather than attack the network.

Market Signal: Increasing hashrate often indicates growing confidence in Bitcoin's long-term value proposition. When miners commit resources to Bitcoin mining, they're signaling belief in future profitability.

Difficulty Adjustment: Bitcoin's protocol automatically adjusts mining difficulty every 2,016 blocks (approximately two weeks) to maintain a consistent block time regardless of hashrate fluctuations.