In the field of digital currency, Bitcoin has always been the focus of much attention. Recently, Bitcoin's hash rate and difficulty hit all-time highs, sparking market buzz and investor attention. This major event not only affects the Bitcoin mining ecology, but also has a profound impact on the entire digital currency market. Next, let’s delve into the story behind Bitcoin’s hash rate and difficulty reaching all-time highs, revealing the changes and impacts.

The Bitcoin network’s hash rate exceeded 68 trillion per second on July 2, 2019 (68
quintillion), has reached an all-time high, and its increase in hashrate, the computing power used to secure a network, is consistent with trends observed in early 2019. The hashrate has been growing at a fairly steady rate every seven days since the beginning of the year.

This number represents the highest hash rate ever achieved by the Bitcoin network, with the previous high of 66 million hashes per second at the end of June 2019.

Improve hashrate and security

Typically, when Bitcoin's hash rate grows over a long period of time, it also causes an increase in mining difficulty, which is the effort required to discover new blocks. Bitcoin Cash suffered a 51% attack in May and Ethereum Classic suffered a 51% attack in January, highlighting the dangers of low hash rates in blockchain networks.

The increase in hash rate ensures the security of the Bitcoin network, effectively making it more difficult for hackers to compromise the integrity of the network.

So far in 2019, difficulty progression has been a recurring series of climbs and plateaus. Bitcoin’s current difficulty level is the same as it was at the end of October 2018, when Bitcoin was trading around $6,000.

By December 2018, when many miners ceased operations as Bitcoin’s value plummeted, the hash rate fell by more than 45%. The new hash rate will likely put an end to any talk of mining compromises arising from this.

Will Bitcoin continue to rise?

While a cryptocurrency's hash rate is often affected by its value, its value is not necessarily affected by its hash rate. In June 2019, Bitcoin surged above $10,000 and went on to hit new highs of nearly $14,000 that month.

The world’s largest digital currency is currently trading at $12,010, up 9.25% in the past 24 hours. While the recovery since 2018 is impressive, it doesn't necessarily indicate any significant price changes in the future.

Currently, the increase in Bitcoin price is believed to be responsible for the corresponding increase in Bitcoin hash rate. This could mean that Bitcoin transaction latency will decrease in the short term until difficulty is relocated.

Activity on the Bitcoin network has increased significantly, resulting in network congestion and extremely high transaction fees. Interestingly, despite the rise in Bitcoin prices, the Bitcoin Lightning Network is barely growing by most metrics. The number of active nodes has increased, but the number of payment channels has decreased.