Hashrate

Hashrate (also hash rate) is a measure of computational speed in cryptocurrency mining — specifically, how many hash calculations a miner or the entire network performs per second. It is the primary metric of mining power.

Units

Unit	Value	Typical use
H/s	1 hash/sec	—
KH/s	1,000 H/s	CPU mining
MH/s	1,000,000 H/s	GPU mining (older)
GH/s	1,000,000,000 H/s	GPU mining
TH/s	10¹² H/s	Bitcoin ASICs
PH/s	10¹⁵ H/s	Mining pools
EH/s	10¹⁸ H/s	Bitcoin network total

Individual vs network hashrate

• Individual hashrate — the output of a single miner or device (e.g., 200 TH/s for a modern Bitcoin ASIC)
• Network hashrate — the combined hashrate of all miners on a blockchain (Bitcoin exceeds 800 EH/s as of 2024)

Why hashrate matters

• For miners: higher personal hashrate = larger share of block rewards
• For the network: higher total hashrate = more energy needed to attack the chain = greater security
• Mining profitability is directly proportional to your share of the network hashrate

Hashrate and difficulty

When total network hashrate increases, difficulty automatically adjusts upward so that blocks continue to be found at the target interval. This means more hashrate does not make the network produce blocks faster — it just raises the bar for everyone.

See also

• ASIC
• Mining pool
• Block reward
• Profitability