New data from monitoring firm Blockchain.com showed that the hash rate for bitcoin (BTC) recently hit a new high.

109% Increase

Bitcoin’s hash rate pushed past 74.5 million tera hashes a second (TH/s) as of July 5. That is an increase of over 109% year-over-year.

Bitcoin’s previous hash rate record was shattered in the latter part of June when it peaked at 65.19 TH/s. The currency has been steadily growing since that achievement.

Hash rate refers to the number of calculations a given network or hardware can execute per second. This is a critical guideline for miners since a higher hash rate boosts their chances of resolving a mathematical issue, closing off the block and picking up the reward.

The high network hash rate also adds to the number of resources essential for conducting a 51% attack, thus ensuring the network remains safe.

Renewable Energy Used in Bitcoin Mining

An increase in a network’s has rate also signifies a rise in the consumption of energy. However, research firm and cryptocurrency investment company CoinShares recently evaluated that 74.1 percent of bitcoin mining runs on renewable energy.

It was confirmed that the time after September 2018, which has been dubbed the “crypto winter,” demonstrated a step back for the bitcoin network. The period was also the first time the network’s hash rate went down.

It came as no surprise to industry insiders when news broke in June that the difficulties encountered in bitcoin mining reached a new high. It was considered a clear sign of the rising competition among miners.

