February 16, 2016 at 17:51What happened to the hashrate?
Since the creation of Bitcoin, mining has changed beyond recognition, and on February 7, the Bitcoin network has reached two more outstanding indicators that will undoubtedly affect its future fate.
First, the computing power of the network, as of February 7, 2016, exceeded 1 exhash per second (1Eh / s - 1 million gigahashes). In peak values, this figure has already been reached several times, but now it is fixed by a recount of complexity that occurred on February 7.
Secondly, the last recalculation of complexity turned out to be noteworthy in that for the first time in a long time, a one-time increase exceeded 20% - quite a bit, but this was enough to achieve a significant mark. On February 7, difficulty increased by 20.06%. There has not been such a sharp jump in the history of bitcoin. So what happened to the hashrate and what follows from this?
A hashrate is the collective computing power of computers that support the Bitcoin network. Only on December 31 of last year, the bitcoin hashrate was 743,604,444 GH / s, and at the time of writing, the computing power of bitcoin is 1,260,403,040,040 GH / s. bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty
The more miners participate in the search, the higher the hashrate and, consequently, the greater the complexity of mining. Mining complexity is a measurement measure characterizing the complexity of searching for hashes matching the network criteria. Difficulty changes after every 2016 new blocks - approximately every two weeks. Currently, mining complexity is 144,116,447,847 and is growing at approximately the same rate as the hashrate.
Over the history of the existence of Bitcoin, the hashrate has grown to colossal indicators. For network stability, the growth of computing power is fundamental, however, in parallel with it, the task of miners is becoming increasingly complex.
Earlier this year, the value of bitcoin fell below $ 300. It seemed to many that this would be enough for a certain number of miners to turn off their devices, considering mining to be inappropriate.
However, the data for the last few months indicate a reverse trend: the computing power of the network has doubled compared with the data for July last year, sharply accelerating growth in the last weeks of last year, continuing the trend at the beginning of the current one.
There are several possible explanations for the resurgent interest in bitcoin mining. The first and most obvious is the increase in the value of bitcoin at the end of last year after a long rollback, which affected the earnings of miners.
The second explanation is related to the activities of BitFury , which released a new generation of super-efficient mining chips and opened its own huge data center in Georgia. In January 2016, Bitfury began mass production of chips developed by the 16 nm process technology, and its Chinese competitors offset the technical achievements of its rival by mass production of optimized 28 nm chips. In addition, the Swedish company KnC Miner also masters 16 nm.
In addition, the reduction of the miner's reward by half is inevitably approaching, after which the reward for each block found will decrease from 25 BTC to 12.5 BTC. It is possible that many seek to have time to mine to the maximum before the fateful hour, however, if the hashrate continues to grow at the same pace, new blocks will be detected more quickly, which will speed up halving.
If you also participate in the general trend, our blog reminds you that you do not have to climb into the mine, you can mine bitcoins in the cloud with the HashFlare cloud mining service .
First, the computing power of the network, as of February 7, 2016, exceeded 1 exhash per second (1Eh / s - 1 million gigahashes). In peak values, this figure has already been reached several times, but now it is fixed by a recount of complexity that occurred on February 7.
Secondly, the last recalculation of complexity turned out to be noteworthy in that for the first time in a long time, a one-time increase exceeded 20% - quite a bit, but this was enough to achieve a significant mark. On February 7, difficulty increased by 20.06%. There has not been such a sharp jump in the history of bitcoin. So what happened to the hashrate and what follows from this?
A hashrate is the collective computing power of computers that support the Bitcoin network. Only on December 31 of last year, the bitcoin hashrate was 743,604,444 GH / s, and at the time of writing, the computing power of bitcoin is 1,260,403,040,040 GH / s. bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty
The more miners participate in the search, the higher the hashrate and, consequently, the greater the complexity of mining. Mining complexity is a measurement measure characterizing the complexity of searching for hashes matching the network criteria. Difficulty changes after every 2016 new blocks - approximately every two weeks. Currently, mining complexity is 144,116,447,847 and is growing at approximately the same rate as the hashrate.
Over the history of the existence of Bitcoin, the hashrate has grown to colossal indicators. For network stability, the growth of computing power is fundamental, however, in parallel with it, the task of miners is becoming increasingly complex.
Earlier this year, the value of bitcoin fell below $ 300. It seemed to many that this would be enough for a certain number of miners to turn off their devices, considering mining to be inappropriate.
However, the data for the last few months indicate a reverse trend: the computing power of the network has doubled compared with the data for July last year, sharply accelerating growth in the last weeks of last year, continuing the trend at the beginning of the current one.
There are several possible explanations for the resurgent interest in bitcoin mining. The first and most obvious is the increase in the value of bitcoin at the end of last year after a long rollback, which affected the earnings of miners.
The second explanation is related to the activities of BitFury , which released a new generation of super-efficient mining chips and opened its own huge data center in Georgia. In January 2016, Bitfury began mass production of chips developed by the 16 nm process technology, and its Chinese competitors offset the technical achievements of its rival by mass production of optimized 28 nm chips. In addition, the Swedish company KnC Miner also masters 16 nm.
In addition, the reduction of the miner's reward by half is inevitably approaching, after which the reward for each block found will decrease from 25 BTC to 12.5 BTC. It is possible that many seek to have time to mine to the maximum before the fateful hour, however, if the hashrate continues to grow at the same pace, new blocks will be detected more quickly, which will speed up halving.
If you also participate in the general trend, our blog reminds you that you do not have to climb into the mine, you can mine bitcoins in the cloud with the HashFlare cloud mining service .