Hash Rate

Hash rate is the total computational throughput being thrown at Bitcoin's proof-of-work puzzle, measured in hashes per second. As of mid-2026, the global Bitcoin hash rate is around 700 EH/s - 700 exahashes per second, or 7 × 10^20 hashes every second.

The units climb fast:

• 1 KH/s = 1 thousand hashes/sec (a 2010-era CPU)
• 1 MH/s = 1 million (a 2011-era GPU)
• 1 GH/s = 1 billion (an early ASIC)
• 1 TH/s = 1 trillion (a single modern ASIC chip, more or less)
• 1 PH/s = 1 quadrillion (a small mining farm)
• 1 EH/s = 1 quintillion (a major industrial operation)

Bitcoin's hash rate has grown by roughly 13 orders of magnitude since the genesis block, when one person on a laptop CPU represented the entire network. That growth is exactly what difficulty retargeting absorbs to keep block times near 10 minutes.

Hash rate matters because it's Bitcoin's security budget. To rewrite history, an attacker has to outpace the global hash rate - which means buying, powering, and operating mining hardware on a scale comparable to the entire global mining industry. At 700 EH/s, the cost of doing that for even a brief reorg is in the billions of dollars per day. That's what proof-of-work buys.

The most common chart you'll see is "hash rate over time," typically going up and to the right with occasional dips during major events (China ban 2021, bear-market capitulations). The trend is the trend.