Vol. I · No. 1

The Stack Report

A periodical for the patient buyer of bitcoin.

§ Network · Hash rate

Hash rate & difficulty

How much computation guards the chain — and what it’s about to cost to keep up.

Network hash rate

1.0 ZH/s

of computation, every second, securing the network.

Last year

Current difficulty

139 T

Next retarget

+2.0%

estimated, in ~12 days

The network is 14% through the current two-week epoch, with 1,728 blocks to go. If the pace holds, difficulty retargets +2.0% miners are arriving faster than the ten-minute target, so the puzzle gets harder.

Hash rate is the total guessing power miners point at the chain; difficulty is the dial the protocol turns every 2,016 blocks to keep new blocks landing about ten minutes apart. Rising hash rate is usually read as conviction — more capital committed to securing the ledger. As ever: numbers, not signals.

Source: mempool.space · hash rate sampled daily