hashrate
Hashrate measures the total computational power used to mine blocks on the Bitcoin network, expressed in hashes per second. A higher hashrate means a more secure network.
Hashrate is a measure of the total computational power being applied to mine blocks and process transactions on the Bitcoin network. It counts how many hash calculations are performed per second across all mining hardware worldwide. A single mining device might compute billions of hashes per second, while the entire network today operates at hundreds of exahashes per second, where one exahash equals one quintillion hashes.
Hashrate is expressed in hashes per second (H/s) and scaled with metric prefixes as the network has grown: kilohashes (kH/s), megahashes (MH/s), gigahashes (GH/s), terahashes (TH/s), petahashes (PH/s), and exahashes (EH/s). Individual consumer-grade mining hardware today is typically rated in terahashes per second, while large industrial mining facilities can contribute petahashes per second to the network.
The hashrate directly reflects the security of the Bitcoin network. To rewrite blockchain history, an attacker would need to produce a longer chain of valid blocks than the honest network, which requires outpacing the combined hashrate of all other participants. The higher the total hashrate, the more hardware and energy that would require, making a successful attack increasingly costly. The Bitcoin protocol adjusts mining difficulty approximately every two weeks so that block times remain close to ten minutes regardless of changes in total hashrate.