Bitcoin Price Is Down, But Hash Rate Just Hit an All-Time High

Bitcoin’s price action might be dull lately—and dipping further so far today—but at least one metric is booming: the cryptocurrency’s hash rate. 

The biggest digital coin’s hash rate today hit 742 exahashes per second (EH/s), according to Ycharts data. That’s an all-time high mark.

This simply means the network is stronger than ever as every second, mining machines around the world tasked with keeping the Bitcoin network running are making 742 quintillion hash computations.

This time last year, the metric stood at 436 EH/S, Ycharts shows—that’s a 70% jump over the last 12 months. 

A high hash rate is important because it means more computing power is being used to keep the cryptocurrency’s network secure. And the more computing power used, the harder it is for attackers to take control of more than 50% of the Bitcoin network.

It also means there is more mining activity on the network as miners expand their operations and use more machines—and power—to continue minting coins. Bitcoin miners are typically large operations run by companies in warehouses that use lots of electricity to process transactions on the virtual coin’s network and mint new coins.

Hash computations—or hashing—is the process of turning data into a fixed-length string of characters. It is needed to do things on the Bitcoin network, like creating private keys so users can make transactions. 

If a hash rate is high, it makes it more difficult for attackers to take over the network because the malicious attacker would need to get enough mining power from machines to match the current hash rate and disrupt it—a costly, energy-consuming, and near-impossible task.

The price of Bitcoin has been sluggish the past month, and currently stands at $57,769—nearly 22% lower than the new high of $73,747 it touched back in March. It's down about 6% over the past week, as well, though its dip over the last month stands at just 2% as of this writing.

But investors in Bitcoin for the long-term can potentially take solace in the fact that the network is achieving what it always set out to do: be an impenetrable, permissionless network for digital currency.

Edited by Andrew Hayward