Bitcoin Network Achieves One Petahash per Second

[Allotrope]

http://thegenesisblock.com/bitcoin-network-reaches-1-petahash-per-second/

 

 

 

The bitcoin network reached another historic milestone milestone today, achieving an estimated total computational speed of 1 petahash per second (1 PH/s = 1,000,000 GH/s). The current speed is 40x faster than where we began the year, faster than 79% of the bitcoin community expected as of just seven months ago. The path to this point goes back to the genesis block itself and offers insight into the foundations of the world’s first digital currency.

 

Definitely impressive. I haven't been following bitcoin news for a long while. That increase since July is crazy.

 

I guess that increase is from ASICs? I know they are custom-made specifically for mining, but they could cause that big of an increase?

[NinjaStyle013]

I would say yes and also the more open public came on board looking for a free buck. Last year bitcoin was like a 4chan kinda thing now its fairly widely known.

[Allotrope]

I would say yes and also the more open public came on board looking for a free buck. Last year bitcoin was like a 4chan kinda thing now its fairly widely known.

 

That makes sense. At this point I assume it would be hard to get into, let alone mining being worthwhile for someone like myself. 

[RuecanOnRails]

I'm glad to see some Bitcoin news pop up here

 

The news article is a little misleading though. There is no way to measure the exact speed of the network so it's an estimate based on how fast blocks are being solved. Solving a block relies heavily upon chance and luck, a constant speed will not produce consistently spaced blocks, it will vary due to randomness.

 

While the network may have appeared to break past the 1 P/Hash barrier, it could have been down to a simple string of luck. Currently the overall average is still an impressive 935 T/Hash and growing. There are spikes down 905 and up to the near P/Hash barrier but it doesn't sustain that estimated speed.

 

Personally I'm not comfortable calling the network speed at being 1 P/Hash until the overall 24 hour average with the highs and lows of random solving is above 1 P/Hash by at least 10 T/Hash. Something like 1.01 P/Hash is my tipping point.

 

 

Mining while it may not be profitable if your plans are to sell instantly after mining. By speculating, holding, or even using bitcoin as a currency you can get more out of mining than what a calculator will tell you. Of course mining bitcoins right now is somewhat difficult, I'd suggest and Alt coin such as Litecoin where the difficulty isn't as volatile due to new hardware being introduced.

 

The popularity is growing constantly with new people learning, and new hardware being developed to "cash in". We are currently watching an arms race between ASIC manufacturers and people willing to put the cash up front to be first in line. Sometimes it pays off, other times it doesn't. I wouldn't recommend buying an asic anytime soon, and if you did, be prepared to spend at least several thousand to get something decent.

 

 

Bitcoin is changing the world and the way we think of money. It's re-building the global economy in ways previously unimaginable. Besides the ability to transmit value instantly anywhere with no central figure, the underlying protocol that Bitcoin is built on is capable of so much. It's in the same phase the internet was, back when it was just TCP/IP without html. The future is bright for Bitcoin and the world is just waking up to it now, get in as an early adopter while you still can.

[NinjaStyle013]

That makes sense. At this point I assume it would be hard to get into, let alone mining being worthwhile for someone like myself.

Yeah. It's pretty hard to now.