Bitcoin Hashrate Hits New All-Time High

Bitcoin is now as secure as ever after the network’s hashrate soared to a new record of 203.5 exahashes per second (EH/s) on January 2, according to data from Bitinfocharts.

Hashrate refers to the total combined computational power used to mine and process transactions. The higher the hashrate, the more secure the network is as the computing power required to successfully attack also increases.

Over the last 12 months, Bitcoin’s hashrate has increased by 49% from the 136.5 EH/s recorded on January 2, 2021.

The growth is even more impressive—a whopping 199.2%—when compared to the values seen in July last year, when the hashrate plummeted as low as 68 EH/s following China’s massive crackdown on the mining industry.

The network has been on a steady rebound since, with several major Bitcoin mining operators relocating to other jurisdictions, including the U.S. and Kazakhstan.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin mining difficulty—a measure of how difficult it is to mine new coins—is projected to increase by another 2.57% later this week. According to BTC.com, this would be spitting distance from its previous record high recorded last May, according to BTC.com.

Bitcoin Genesis Block Day

The network’s new milestone came just in time to mark the 13th anniversary of Bitcoin’s Genesis Block Day.

On January 3, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, generated the network’s block zero, also known as the Genesis Block, with its coinbase data containing the famous headline from the British newspaper The Times: “Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.”

While Nakamoto never revealed the meaning of the message, many Bitcoin enthusiasts see it as a reference to the actual motives behind Nakamoto’s invention: to create a new digital currency without intermediaries like banks.

“It was the start to the peaceful revolution that has changed millions of lives, and soon will change billions of lives,” Bitcoin infrastructure company Blockstream wrote in a tweet on Monday.

Notably, the Bitcoin Genesis Block was not actually “mined” the same way the subsequent Bitcoin blocks were. Instead, it was hardcoded into the protocol software, with the first block arriving six days later on January 9, 2009.

Bitcoin has since become an $893 billion network, with almost 15,000 nodes holding a full or a partial copy of the world’s first blockchain.

Whether these figures continue to grow into 2022 remains to be seen.