Bitcoin hashrate reaches new record of 698 EH/s

On Thursday, the Bitcoin hashrate set a new all-time record of 698 exahash per second (EH/s), breaking the previous peak of 693 EH/s on September 8. This milestone shows that Bitcoin miners continue to grow despite recent challenges in the industry.

Hashrate increases despite challenges

In recent months, miners have faced a decline in both the Bitcoin price and the hash price, the estimated daily yield per petahash per second (PH/s). Despite this, the network’s total computing power rose to new heights.

On October 10, the seven-day moving average reached 698.94 EH/s, after falling to 625 EH/s at the end of September. Within ten days, miners added a whopping 73 EH/s to the network, despite Bitcoin’s falling price and increasing network difficulty.

The recent 4.09% increase in difficulty makes it increasingly difficult for miners to earn rewards, but this hasn’t stopped them from intensifying their efforts.

The block interval – the time it takes to add a new block to the blockchain – has been shortened to an average of nine minutes and 36 seconds. While faster block production typically leads to a further increase in difficulty, difficulty is actually expected to decrease by 5.9% during the next update on October 22, 2024.

Bitcoin network is running at full speed

The increase in the hashrate not only has technical implications for the network, but also financial consequences for the miners. Although the hash price dropped to $38.91 per PH/s at the beginning of September, it has now increased by 11.75% to $43.48 per PH/s following the recent BTC price drop. This increase in revenue encourages miners to continue their activities even during a period of increasing difficulty.

Remarkably, the new hashrate record is being set as more and more Bitcoin miners move to artificial intelligence (AI) data centers. Despite this shift, however, the Bitcoin hashrate remains at an all-time high and the network is running at full speed.