Why bitcoin hashrate spiked to new highs

cnbctv18.com:

Bitcoin hashrate, an important metric and a direct indicator of the network's ability to verify and store incoming transactions, soared to new all-time highs over the last weekend.Hashrate is the computational power used to mine and process transactions on a proof of work cryptocurrency network. It measures the number of calculations the network performed per second.

A higher hashrate indicates the network is more secure with large number of miners verifying transactions. Attackers would require immense computing power to take majority control of the network.According to data from Glassnode, a blockchain data and intelligence provider, bitcoin's hashrate jumped to 248.11 million terahashes per second on February 12.

This rally in hashrate represents an increase of 200 percent since bitcoin's biggest dip in June 2021. The dip in June saw the hashrate drop to 82 million terahashes per second.

The most significant cause of the drop was China's legislation to ban all bitcoin mining activities as the country contributed to over 34 percent of the total bitcoin mining hashrate until the ban.Also Read| Crypto commercials make a splash at Super Bowl; Coinbase ad crashes its appThe bitcoin network’s hashrate levels have risen 54.33 percent over the past year, according to Cointelegraph.Why has the hashrate started rising?The increase in hashrate means more mining power is being added to the network. Whenever new miners join the network, the mining difficulty increases.