Behind the scenes, bitcoin is working to reach a staggering milestone. It seems only a matter of time until the bitcoin hash rate reaches a speed of 100 trillion hashes per second.
You can see that on this blockchain.com chart. On May 5, the network still had a hash rate of 42 trillion hashes per second. Now the hash rate is almost 100 trillion hashes per second. A large doubling (138 percent) in just four months:
Joint computer power on the network continues to rise
The hash rate describes in simple words how many calculations a computer can make per second. The graph above therefore shows how many calculations per second make the total bitcoin computer network.
Bitcoin transactions are processed by miners, these miners use their computer power to make the network more secure (and to earn bitcoin). The more computer power there is on the network, the harder it is to hack into the bitcoin blockchain. At the moment, hacking is almost impossible unless you are willing to buy equipment for millions of euros.
Miners use powerful and specialized equipment to mine bitcoin. This equipment can no longer be compared with a normal home, garden and kitchen laptop, but is much faster. The flagship of Bitmain, the Antminer S9K, for example, achieves 13.5 terahash per second. It has been stated that 13,000,000,000,000 hashes per second. Very fast!
But one miner is nothing compared to the total network, almost 100 trillion hashes per second. That is written out 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 hashes per second.
Let’s put that in perspective. With a fairly fast laptop (for example with an Intel Core i7 620M processor) you can mine at a speed of 6,500,000 hashes per second. That seems a lot at first, but not if you compare it to the entire bitcoin network. You need 15 trillion laptops to keep up with the entire bitcoin network! It is therefore impossible for you to lay down the bitcoin network on your own.
Bitcoin block halving may come faster than expected
Because the hash rate increases at such a rapid pace, the bitcoin block halving is earlier than initially expected. On April 24 this year we thought that this would happen on or around May 22, 2020. The block halving is now expected earlier. The block halving does not take place on a fixed time and date, but on a specific transaction block.
And right now, transaction blocks are being added faster and faster. That has to do with the way the bitcoin network has been developed. Miners add a new transaction block to the bitcoin blockchain on average every ten minutes. Do more miners participate? Then the level of difficulty has to be increased. In this way it will take ten minutes to add a transaction block.
The difficulty level is adjusted every 2016 blocks, which is approximately every two weeks. If more miners are added at a fast pace, it will take less than ten minutes on average to add a transaction block. Or yes, at least until the next change in difficulty. The chart below is from Bitinfocharts, it now takes 7.8 minutes to add a transaction block. This brings the block halving closer:
This also falls on crypto-twitter on:
Last 24 hours has an average block time of 7 minutes 50 seconds.
Miners really because those 12.5 btc blocks while they last.– hodlonaut?⚡? (@hodlonaut) September 12, 2019
And the course?
They are interesting developments, but one thing is striking. The hash rate is rising, but the bitcoin rate is still lagging behind. You saw earlier that the price had an influence on the hash rate. When the value of bitcoin fell sharply in November 2018, you also saw that miners lost interest in mining bitcoin. It seems that miners now have more confidence. The rate is falling, but the number of miners continues to increase.
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