Bitcoin Hashrate Is Up 72% In Six Months As BTC Network Hits New Highs

The Bitcoin mining hashrate has witnessed a massive surge over the past two days, hitting a new all-time high of approximately 61.866 EH/s (61,866,256 TH/s). The hash rate has since then retraced to 46.48 EH/s as the uptrend continues.

The increase in hashrate coincided with a rise in the price of Bitcoin, which crossed the $7,000 mark after weeks of trading below that.

The hash rate has since dropped as Bitcoin slipped below $7,000. Although the network seems to jump regularly, the large leap observed yesterday may suggest that a big miner is being sidelined so long as Bitcoin remains below $7k.

Technically speaking, more hashing power implies more computers are supporting the Bitcoin network, making the network increasingly more secure.

Bitcoin hashrate jumps 10 million TH/s in a single day

Bitcoin hash rate has constantly been on a rise. It, however, hit another level as the hashrate continued to rise tremendously.

The computing power of the Bitcoin network has broken over 60 million terahashes per second, reaching a new high. This represented a massive surge considering Bitcoin’s hashrate was 45 million terahashes just a few days before.

This rise implies that Bitcoin mining continues to gather interest despite the bear market which has affected the prices of Bitcoin since the start of the year.

The increase in Bitcoin hashrate has caused excitements amongst some cryptocurrency enthusiasts. Max Keiser, the financial analyst, and crypto expert is optimistic that price follows hashrate.

He tweeted that:

New ATH. 60,000 quadrillion calculations per second. Unstoppable. New ATH incoming. #Bitcoin

Environmental concerns

The increase in hashrate also sees Bitcoin’s energy consumption surpass the total amount of electricity consumed in Austria. However, as we previously reported, the environmental impact of Bitcoin and crypto mining can be very minimal should miners use renewable energy sources.

In fact, a mining firm recently purchased an old hydroelectric dam in the state of New York, which will be dedicated to mining bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The upcoming mining farm will cause a very minimal impact on the environment considering that hydropower is the least damaging to the environment.

Bitcoin mining hashrate has been on the rise

Over the past few months, the mining hashrate of Bitcoin has been on the rise. In March, the network hashrate stood at 23.3 million terahashes per second. By June, that number had nearly doubled, with Bitcoin mining hashrate reaching 43 million terahashes per second.

For the most part of July, the hashrate stagnated until it rose past 50 million terahashes per second towards the end of last month. It has stayed at that rate over the past three weeks until this most recent blastoff in mining speed three days ago.

The extreme mining activity indicates that mining farms are not abandoning their businesses despite the low Bitcoin price.

What caused the massive increase in mining hashrate is still unknown. However, there are suggestions that it could be some major mining operations coming online.

Another possibility considered is that Bitmain has finally started testing its S11 mining hardware. Bitmain is expected to release its latest mining hardware very soon, and there is an expectation that it would have a huge mining speed.

Uptrend begins as Bitcoin breaks $7,000

The Bitcoin price has found it hard to reach the $7,000 mark over the past few weeks. Bitcoin broke through $7,000 after consecutive small gains but has retraced below since this morning.

As at the time of writing this report, BTC was trading at $6,891, with a 24-hours trading volume of $4.3 billion.