Just How Secure Exactly?

Bitcoin's network hashrate is reaching new ATHs. Breaking 1 Zettahash per second has become so commonplace that it can escape our minds on just how insane that number truly is.

1 Zettahash, 1000 Million Terahashes, 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (10^²¹) hashes is a number so unfathomable that we can take the security of Bitcoin's blockchain for granted.

Earth has approximately 10^18 individual grains of sand across all of it's beaches and oceans.

Every single second, the amount of mining calculations collectively done by the network outnumbers the number of grains of sand on earth by a factor of one thousand.

But it is so much greater than that. This is just the amount of hashes that happens per second. Let's extrapolate a little further.

If each block requires approximately 10 minutes of compute to find a solution, that means it takes approximately 600 seconds of this network hashrate to find a solution. That's over 600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 hashes to find one single solution, or 6*10^23 hashes.

How big is this number? Well the number of stars in the entire observable universe is on the order of 7*10^22 stars.

Every single block added to the blockchain is protected by more individual calculations than the number of stars in the entire known universe by a factor of ten.

Ok, lets do the hail Mary. How many hashes have ever been calculated for the Bitcoin network? Well using historical Bitcoin hashrate charts and a little bit of calculus, it's easy to get a quick estimate!

As of February 2025, 5.45*10^28 hashes have been approximately computed by miners since the dawn of Bitcoin.

That's 54.5 Billion Exahashes, 54.5 Million Zettahash, 54,500 Yottahash, or 54.5 Ronnahash.

This is approximately the same amount as the observable universe is wide. in centimeters.

Here's to the next ZH/s. Cheers