What Is Hash Rate or Hash Power In Cryptocurrency?
There are thousands of people involved in cryptocurrency mining. They use high-end technology to solve the block to mine coins.
Hash rate or Hash Power is the most important term a miner should be familiar with. It is the hash power that determines the efficiency of a miner. Let’s familiar with them through this article.
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What Is Hash Rate or Hash Power In Cryptocurrency?
Hash rate is defined as the number of hash operations performed in a given amount of time or the speed of a miner’s performance.
In a more simple way, the hash rate is the speed at which a mining system solves the puzzle involved in a blockchain.
A block consists of a number of difficult mathematical problems. In order to mine a block, the miner should make several attempts in solving the problem.
The number of attempts a miner makes in a second is termed as hash rate or hash power.
The higher hash rate is advantageous for mining because it provides us with a better chance of finding the next block easily.
It is to be noted that the same machine used to mine different currencies have different hash rates. This means a machine have different hash rates for mining bitcoin and ethereum.
Hash Rate Measurement
The SI unit of hash rate is hashed per second which is denoted as h/s. If the hash rate of a machine is defined as 100 h/s, the machine will make 100 attempts in a second to solve a block.
Some common terms such a kilo, mega, Giga, Tera, etc. are used for representing higher hash rates.
Significance of Hash Rate
Hash rate is one of the main factors that determine the mining ability of the miners. There are many factors depending on the hash rate.
✔ Mining speed: The hash rate of hashing power determines the number of attempts the machine does in a second while solving a block. The higher the number of attempts the faster the block is solved.
✔ Mining Capacity: If the hash rate is increased, the number of coins mined by a system in a particular time period increases.
✔ Regulating the market Capacity: The number of total coins circulating in the market should be maintained. The hash power limits the mining capacity of the miners as the blockchain difficulty increases. This will reduce the mining rate and helps in maintaining the total market capacity.
✔ Security: Hash functions are used in cryptography to increase the security of the transactions. It plays an important role in authentication, digital signatures, etc.
The current hash rate of the bitcoin network is 50 TH/s. Mining a bitcoin using hash power is not an easy task. It requires a very high investment in the form of advanced machinery and electricity bills.
The increasing trend of mining is making the blockchain difficult to solve. Hence regular updates should be made in one’s hash power to continue mining.
