Hash rate is the speed at which a proof-of-work network's miners make guesses: each guess is one run of the network's hash function on a candidate block, and the rate counts how many happen every second across all machines. It is the usual shorthand for how much computing power protects a chain, and for Bitcoin it stood at about 1,046 exahashes a second (EH/s) on November 2, 2026. The crypto hub covers the wider market, and proof of work explains why those guesses secure the ledger.
What does hash rate measure?
It measures attempts, not successes: every hash is one lottery ticket for the next block, and the rate says how many tickets the whole network buys each second.
| Unit | Hashes per second | Where it appears |
|---|---|---|
| TH/s, terahashes | 10¹² | A single mining machine |
| PH/s, petahashes | 10¹⁵ | A small mining farm, and the unit miners use to quote revenue |
| EH/s, exahashes | 10¹⁸ | Large pools, listed miners' fleets and the whole network |
| ZH/s, zettahashes | 10²¹ | Bitcoin's network, which first passed 1,000 EH/s in 2025 |
A machine rated at 200 TH/s therefore supplies about one five-millionth of a network running at 1,046 EH/s. Efficiency is a separate figure, quoted in joules per terahash, so two machines with the same hash rate can draw very different amounts of electricity.
How is Bitcoin's hash rate estimated?
From two public facts: the difficulty, which fixes how many hashes a block takes on average, and the pace at which blocks actually arrive.
Multiplying difficulty by 2³², about 4.29 billion, gives the expected number of hashes per block, a shortcut the Bitcoin Wiki derives from the target arithmetic. Dividing by the observed time per block turns that into hashes per second.
Worked example: From difficulty to hash rate on November 2, 2026
- Difficulty set at block 973,728 on October 29: 148,364,561,003,867.
- Expected hashes per block: 148,364,561,003,867 × 4,294,967,296 ≈ 6.37 × 10²³.
- At the 600-second target spacing: 6.37 × 10²³ ÷ 600 ≈ 1.062 × 10²¹ hashes a second, or 1,062 EH/s.
- At the 607.9-second average for blocks since that adjustment: about 1,048 EH/s, within a fraction of a percent of mempool.space's estimate that morning.
The arithmetic also runs the other way. Every 2,016 blocks, Bitcoin resets difficulty so that the hash rate it has just observed would have produced one block every 10 minutes; the retarget formula is in the proof of work entry. Hash rate is the cause and difficulty the delayed response, which is why blocks drift early or late between resets.
Why do hash rate figures differ between sites?
Each site averages over a different window, and short windows are noisy, because blocks arrive at random and a day can bring well above or below the 144 expected.
- One day, 144 blocks: about 8.3%.
- Three days, 432 blocks: about 4.8%.
- One week, 1,008 blocks: about 3.1%.
- One difficulty period, 2,016 blocks: about 2.2%.
The noise shows up in real readings. For October 24 to November 1, 2026, mempool.space's daily estimates ranged from 964 to 1,228 EH/s, a 27% gap, and at 06:10 UTC on November 2 its three-day figure was 1,071 EH/s while its one-week figure was 1,047. Swings of that size fit the luck in a 144-block sample, so they say little about machines being switched on or off. Comparing the same site over the same window avoids mistaking noise for news.
What does a falling hash rate mean?
It means machines have been switched off or unplugged, usually because mining stopped paying, power got scarce or a government intervened.
- Weather and the grid. A US winter storm in late January 2026 knocked about 200 EH/s offline across pools as miners cut power to strained grids, according to The Block. A seven-day average of mempool.space's daily estimates fell from 1,042 EH/s on January 24 to 826 EH/s on January 31.
- Revenue. Difficulty, the smoothest record of hash rate, fell 19.9% from a record 155.97 trillion on October 29, 2025 to 124.93 trillion on June 14, 2026, while Coinbase's bitcoin price, as published by FRED, more than halved. By October 29, 2026 it was back at 148.36 trillion.
- Policy. Around China's crackdown, announced by a State Council committee on May 21, 2021, the same seven-day average fell from 180.8 EH/s on May 14 to 84.3 EH/s on July 3, and regained that level only in December.
Until the next reset, fewer machines mean slower blocks: the storm pushed average block times to about 12.4 minutes. Difficulty then catches up in both directions. It fell 11.16% at block 935,424 on February 7, 2026, and rose 14.73% to 144.40 trillion at block 937,440 on February 19 once the machines came back. A lower hash rate also makes a majority attack cheaper, while balances and the supply schedule are unaffected. How falling revenue squeezes miners, measured as hashprice, is worked through in bitcoin halving explained.
How concentrated is Bitcoin's hash rate?
Heavily at the pool level: in the month to November 2, 2026, three pools found 63.3% of all blocks, according to mempool.space.
The largest pool, Foundry USA, found 26.2% of the 4,673 blocks in that month, and the top six together 83.3%. A pool is a coordinator rather than an owner: it hands out work, combines the results of thousands of machines and splits the rewards, and its members can point their machines at another pool. Pool share still matters, because the pool operator usually chooses which transactions from the mempool go into each block.
How is hash rate different from difficulty, hashprice and transaction speed?
Hash rate is measured work per second; the other terms describe a protocol setting, miner revenue and network throughput, and they move for different reasons.
| Term | What it is | How it relates to hash rate |
|---|---|---|
| Difficulty | A number in the protocol setting how hard a valid block is, reset every 2,016 blocks | Follows hash rate with a lag; exact, while hash rate is estimated |
| Hashprice | Miner revenue per unit of hash rate per day, often in dollars per PH/s | Falls when hash rate rises faster than rewards and fees |
| Hash | One output of the hash function, the fingerprint of a block | Hash rate counts how many are produced each second |
| Transactions per second | How many payments the chain processes | Unrelated; more hashing does not add block space |
In practice the term turns up in listed miners' reports, which quote fleet size in EH/s, and on block explorers next to the bitcoin price. The network's design and supply schedule are covered in what is Bitcoin, and the alternative that replaces hashing with deposits in proof of stake.