Bitcoin Hashrate to Reach 1 Zettahash per Second (ZH/s) by July 2025

A Coinshares report predicts Bitcoin's network hashpower will likely reach 1 Zettahash per second (ZH/s) by July 2025.

The digital asset investment firm, Coinshares, is predicting that Bitcoin’s network hashpower will likely reach 1 Zettahash per second (ZH/s) as early as July this year.

This projection, which was provided in the latest Coinshares report, has been revised from a previous estimate of 0.77 Zettahash per second (ZH/s) by the fourth quarter of 2024.

The report notes that Bitcoin’s hashpower at the end of 2024 was 778 Exahash per second (EH/s), which is slightly above Coinshares’ earlier projection of 765 EH/s. This performance can be attributed to the strong bitcoin price action throughout the year, which incentivized miners to deploy their hardware more rapidly.

The Coinshares team predicts that hashpower will continue to surge, reaching 1.28 Zh/s by the end of 2025 and potentially hitting 2.0 ZH/s by early 2027. This exponential growth is fueled by increasing investment and competition within the bitcoin mining sector.

Reaching the milestone of 1 Zettahash per second (ZH/s) is significant because it indicates a more secure and resilient network. In addition, an increased hashrate also suggests that bitcoin miners are investing significantly in mining hardware, which itself is a show of confidence in the future of bitcoin and its profitability.

However, despite the bullish outlook for hashrate growth, the Coinshares report also provides insights into hash prices, a key metric for miner profitability. While hash prices have seen a modest rebound this year, Coinshares’ proprietary forecasting model points to a gradual structural decline. The report suggests that hash prices are likely to remain range-bound between $35 and $50 per Petahash per day (PH/day) through the 2028 bitcoin halving cycle.

This anticipated decline reflects ongoing efficiency gains in mining hardware and increasing competitive pressure within the mining sector, as more participants deploy advanced and powerful machines.

Coinshares also delves into the essence of bitcoin and gold mining, highlighting their fundamental similarities amidst crucial differences. Both domains are characterized by cyclical economics, substantial capital investment, and a noteworthy reliance on energy markets.

While gold mining involves identifying deposits, securing permits and deploying heavy machinery for ore extraction, bitcoin mining operates digitally, a continuous computational race using specialized ASICs, electricity, and the internet to solve complex math problems. Winners settle transactions and earn new coins plus fees (Proofs of Work).

Mining’s inherent cost underlies both assets’ scarcity: bitcoin’s via immutable code and competition; gold’s via physical, geological limitations.

“Bitcoin mining, by contrast, is much more dynamic and unpredictable. Company revenues depend not only on the relatively volatile market price of bitcoin, but on their share of the global hashrate (read: global competition). If others expand their operations more aggressively, your relative output can decline even if your mining operations do not change. It’s an ongoing variance to consider for operators,” the Coinshares report concludes.