Hash Rate

The current hash rate can be found here: https://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate. It

indicates that the rate has been rising steadily over time and that it currently stands at approximately 31 million terahashes per second (TH/s). That is an

extremely high number because 1 terahash already

means 1012 or 1,000,000,000,000, or one trillion hashes. Can you imagine the

computational power that needs to go into computing 1 trillion hashes per second?

Now, imagine that multiplied by 30 million. That‘s the level of hashing that is

going on now in the mining world forBitcoin to keep the currency going.

Every second that goes by, all the miners in the world are collectively calculating

31,000,000,000,000,000,000 – thirty one million trillion hashes every second. The

more miners that come online, the more that difficulty number is going to go up.

Miners enter the fray to be the first to solve the puzzle and claim the reward which

is 12.5 Bitcoins at the moment. In one day, 12.5 Bitcoins are released every ten

minutes. That means 75 Bitcoins an hour are up for grabs. At today‘s market value

of almost 10,000 dollars, that‘s 750,000 a day that can be gained from mining. This

is the reason you see miners flood the market because there are significant amounts

of revenue up for grabs.

But the system is built in such a way that the more hash power there is, the more

difficult the puzzle. This is because the intention of the developers of Bitcoin was to

have a predictable interval between the release of new Bitcoins into the population.

Remember Bitcoin is released only through miners as a reward for their mining contribution. To keep this consistently at ten minutes (or close to it), the system

monitors the hash rate that is online, plus the timing it took the last few puzzles to

be solved. You can see that here: https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-

If the system sees that there are so many miners and the hash rate increases to the point that they

are finding solutions faster than 9 minutes or less, then the system changes the

nonce constraint and may say we now need there to be 19 zeros and that will add a

few more minutes of processing time.