Last May Bitcoin.com reported on how the Bitcoin network’s hashrate surpassed four exahash per second. Just two months later on July 1st, the hashrate has increased another two exahash which transcended to a high of 6,622,799,000 GH/s according to Blockchain.info and Bitcoin Wisdom statistics.
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The Exahash Era: Bitcoin Hashrate Breaks Another Record
The first week of July is showing the vast power of the Bitcoin network as miners are currently processing transactions at a whopping 5,808,727,020 GH/s. On July 1st miners pushed the hashrate up over six exahash per second reaching it’s highest point ever recorded. The mining ecosystem is far bigger than during the early days, as miners progressed from CPU mining, GPU mining, FPGA Mining, to giant warehouses filled with ASIC miners.
Furthermore, there are far more mining pools today, as there are currently 24 known pools taking a portion of the hashrate pie. Things are quite different than the early days when one single bitcoin enthusiast like Artforz captured a significant portion of the network’s hashrate. People also often forget when the mining pool Ghash.io passed the 51 percent mark in 2014, as pools in 2017 are more diversified than ever before. Only three pools command more than ten percent of the hashrate while the other 21 pools process less than ten percent.
Hashrate Has Jumped Leaps and Bounds Since 2009
The two exahash increase over the past month and a half has coincided with bitcoin’s rising fiat value, increased demand and mining revenue at all-time highs. Moreover, mining revenue has increased while the block reward has decreased since 2009’s first fifty BTC reward to 12.5 BTC per block, with the reward expected to continue to halve approximately every four years. In September of 2013, the hash rate had only hit one petahash per second, so the hashrate is expanding significantly yearly. The six exahash record also comes only one year and six months after the network topped one exahash or 1000 petahashes per second.
A Pure and Voluntary Economic Incentive Continues to Amass Significant Power
The exponential rate growth will someday surpass the exahash era (exabytes) and could reach zettabytes or even yottabytes per second. This will likely take many years as 500 exabytes is only one-half of a zettabyte.
The record-breaking six exahash is another landmark achievement for the Bitcoin network as the innovative protocol has reached many milestones this year. It’s an amazing feat to see such power obtained without a large corporation or government backing. All of the hashrate power is commanded by miners choosing to join the decentralized system voluntarily, all thanks to the economic incentive of the block reward plus transaction fees.
What do you think about the Bitcoin network’s hashrate surpassing six exahash per second? Let us know in the comments below.