Hash Rate: Bitcoin network computing power explained
Hash rate is the number of hash calculations a device or network performs per second and is an important indicator for observing mining performance, competitive intensity, and investment in network security.
What Is Hash Rate?
Hash rate measures how many hash calculations a mining machine or an entire network attempts per second and is expressed in h/s. Miners calculate repeatedly to find a valid block hash that satisfies the difficulty requirement. A higher hash rate means more attempts within a given period and generally a greater chance of being first to find a valid result and earn the block reward.
How Units Are Converted
Hash rate is commonly expressed in Kh/s, MH/s, GH/s, TH/s, PH/s, EH/s, and ZH/s, with each unit increasing by a factor of one-thousandfold. For example, 1 TH/s represents one-trillion hash calculations per second, and 1 EH/s equals one-million TH/s. Larger networks generally use larger units.
Why Difficulty Adjusts
When more miners join and the network-wide hash rate rises, the Bitcoin protocol increases mining difficulty with the aim of maintaining an average block time of about a ten-minute interval. Difficulty adjusts approximately every 2,016 blocks, so a miner's competitiveness depends on the proportion of total network computing power it controls.
Changes Brought by Specialized Hardware
Early participants could mine with personal computers or GPUs. Later, ASIC miners designed for Bitcoin's SHA-256 algorithm drove growth in the network-wide hash rate through higher efficiency, making ordinary CPUs and GPUs uncompetitive. Hash rate may also be affected by energy costs, profitability, and seasonal factors.
Original Tutorial
https://www.binance.com/zh-CN/academy/glossary/hash-rate
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