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![]() All miners are running at full scale ![]() 04.May.20 8:51 AM By Shawn Highstraw Photo toinnov.com |
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There is more computer power than ever mining bitcoin (BTC). The hash rate has reached a new peak. According to data from Glassnode, the hashrate is currently higher than ever. The hashrate measures how powerful the hardware is for mining bitcoin. Hashrate indicates how many times the "hash function" can be calculated in one second by mining hardware. The total hashrate is and remains an estimate based on past figures. That is why different parties publish different numbers, it depends on which method they use to get the statistics. Miners provide as much computer power as possible to make the most of a block. Something remarkable happened earlier this month: Bitcoin miners found 16 blocks in over an hour, normally there are 6. The graph above clearly shows that the hashrate has been on the rise for some time. It is not the first time the hashrate has broken a record this year. At the peak of BTC's price (late 2017, early 2018), the hashrate was a lot lower. Competition for new bitcoin is increasing. It is not the case that all kinds of energy companies or other entrepreneurs switch to mining bitcoin. We do see more and more new players entering the field. For example, there is a power plant in New York that has already sold 30% of their energy for bitcoin mining. There are also initiatives to prevent energy acceleration at oil companies. Bitcoin podcaster Marty Bent (still) provides solutions on a small scale to convert by-products into energy for bitcoin mining. The battle will be even more intense this month: miners will soon be able to earn "only" 6.25 BTC per block, which is now 12.5 BTC. This phenomenon is called bitcoin halving. Every four years (210,000 blocks), the influx of new bitcoin cuts in half. |