How reliable is the site Bitinfocharts for Bitcoin Statistics?

[Picard78]

I use Bitinfocharts to monitor Bitcoin's Network Hashrate but today I looked at Block Size and it's under 1 MB (around 900KB) which is wrong.  The average Block Size is above 1MB due to Segwit.

https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/size-btc.html#2y

Is the information on Bitinfocharts unreliable for Hashrate?  Where can I track Bitcoin's network Hashrate and Difficulty?

Thank you

[pooya87]

they are obviously running a very old version of their full node that has not yet been updated to 3-years-ago version to support SegWit so their node receives all blocks in a "simplified" way which is like stripping them down so that the old versions can deserialize and understand them and when you strip them down their size shrinks.

for example https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/block/647382 which is 1,276,359 raw bytes will be stripped down to 905,683 bytes (905 kbytes) hence the wrong values on that chart.

hashrate computation has not changed compared to day one, so they are as accurate as they have always been which isn't that much because there really isn't any accurate way of computing the hashrate. all we can do is to come up with an estimate. not to mention that the changes in hashrate can not be measured in short term (like reporting daily) because the flaw in calculated result will be huge since mining is a random (chance based) operation. but in long term (eg. 2 weeks intervals) the chance of having mistakes is lower and the computed result is closer to reality.
that is also part of the reason why difficulty adjustment is done in 2-week periods.

Where can I track Bitcoin's network Hashrate and Difficulty?

why do you want to track it?

[elda34b]

I think https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/ is good enough. mempool.space also give you a good stats for block size. Hashrate is just an estimation as mentioned above, so there's probably a slight deviation here and there, I think you can just make an aggregate from various stats websites.

[stompix]

Is the information on Bitinfocharts unreliable for Hashrate?  Where can I track Bitcoin's network Hashrate and Difficulty?
Thank you

Bitcoin's difficulty has no issues like the block size, you can't interpret it in any way different than it is.
Go with https://www.blockchain.com/charts/difficulty if you don't trust bitinfocharts, or blockchair

As for the hashrate, that is a different story, if you're looking at the daily value your will get different values based on the time websites are using to make their reports, like the hash rate in the last ~ 24hours, the hashrate from 0-24 GMT, 0-24 PST, that could vary a lot and at the same time, all can be accurate.  That said, I don't see a daily hash as a solid indicator of anything other than miner's luck or bad luck, no point looking at it.

You're far better monitoring the current block pace, like https://diff.cryptothis.com/ is doing, that is a better indicator on how things are going.

[Shimmiry]

I think https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/ is good enough. mempool.space also give you a good stats for block size. Hashrate is just an estimation as mentioned above, so there's probably a slight deviation here and there, I think you can just make an aggregate from various stats websites.

Indeed. Blockchair has been used by over a million of users to track their bitcoin transaction status and even the statistics of the Bitcoin and its Hashrate. I don't know why the op prefer Bitinfocharts as it obviously uses the old tracking system and hashrate depends on a lot of factors especially on the network.

As for the hashrate, that is a different story, if you're looking at the daily value your will get different values based on the time websites are using to make their reports, like the hash rate in the last ~ 24hours, the hashrate from 0-24 GMT, 0-24 PST, that could vary a lot and at the same time, all can be accurate.  That said, I don't see a daily hash as a solid indicator of anything other than miner's luck or bad luck, no point looking at it.

Maybe he's just curious with the blockchain and miner's income with their services. Or he is an aspiring miner as well. It's his obvious reason why he insist tracking hashrates and difficulties.

[Picard78]

all we can do is to come up with an estimate. not to mention that the changes in hashrate can not be measured in short term (like reporting daily) because the flaw in calculated result will be huge since mining is a random (chance based) operation.

I am not interested in what the Network Hashrate is on a specific day but what it is generally at, at this particular time (week or month).  When I read the below post I thought daily Hashrate was a "fairly" accurate representation of the Network Hashrate especially when you take into account multiple adjacent days on the chart.

https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/11139/how-is-the-network-hash-rate-calculated

Maybe he's just curious with the blockchain and miner's income with their services. Or he is an aspiring miner as well. It's his obvious reason why he insist tracking hashrates and difficulties.

I made a small investment in a Bitcoin Mining company.  They currently have 1.2 EH/s.  From time to time I am curious how much of the total network hashing power they are contributing.  Currently, it's about 1% since total network average Hashrate is 120 EH/s.

That being said, I thought the Network Hashrate would be of interest to anyone holding Bitcoin because it's a measure of the strength / health of the network ... no?

[stompix]

That being said, I thought the Network Hashrate would be of interest to anyone holding Bitcoin because it's a measure of the strength / health of the network ... no?

Not really.
We have a topic in mining where we discuss the next difficulty predictions and the evolution of the hashrate but it's more of a miner's thing. The average holder doesn't care really about the hash rate fluctuations, mainly because he can't do a thing about it and because, well, not every holder really understands what this is.

As long as blocks come at ~10 mins, everything is fine, if the pace increases then it's way better if the opposite happens...well, there is nothing that we can really do about it, it's not like the community can suddenly put their hand on 100k miners to prop 10% of the hashrate in case of a sudden drop.
Basically, we're taking network security for granted 

[pooya87]

all we can do is to come up with an estimate. not to mention that the changes in hashrate can not be measured in short term (like reporting daily) because the flaw in calculated result will be huge since mining is a random (chance based) operation.

I am not interested in what the Network Hashrate is on a specific day but what it is generally at, at this particular time (week or month).  When I read the below post I thought daily Hashrate was a "fairly" accurate representation of the Network Hashrate especially when you take into account multiple adjacent days on the chart.

https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/11139/how-is-the-network-hash-rate-calculated

its all about the statistical error.
we can think of it as a scale where 14-day intervals or 20160 minutes or 2016 blocks (when difficulty readjusts) is the maximum level of accuracy with value of 1 and 1-block intervals (average 10 minute) is the minimum level of accuracy with the value of 0.
in my opinion 144 blocks (approximate in one day) is still a very small number of items in the set for statistics to be accurate even though the time part is long.

Maybe he's just curious with the blockchain and miner's income with their services. Or he is an aspiring miner as well. It's his obvious reason why he insist tracking hashrates and difficulties.

I made a small investment in a Bitcoin Mining company.  They currently have 1.2 EH/s.  From time to time I am curious how much of the total network hashing power they are contributing.  Currently, it's about 1% since total network average Hashrate is 120 EH/s.

That being said, I thought the Network Hashrate would be of interest to anyone holding Bitcoin because it's a measure of the strength / health of the network ... no?

for your purpose it is probably fine. and it is more than fine when people want to measure "network strength".
but sometimes you see people try to predict bitcoin price based on hashrate which makes absolutely no sense.

[mikeywith]

That being said, I thought the Network Hashrate would be of interest to anyone holding Bitcoin because it's a measure of the strength / health of the network ... no?

It is fairly accurate but not 100% accurate since bitcoin isn't a centralized organization where all miners are pointed to a single server, nobody has the real data of the total network hashrate, so most websites use the speed and the number of blocks found to determine the hashrate, so that makes it off by a bit, also a huge amount of the SHA256 hashrate runs on auto profit-switching, so it could be mining BTC for 20 mins and then jumps to another coin for 10 mins and so on.

but sometimes you see people try to predict bitcoin price based on hashrate which makes absolutely no sense.

The Hash Ribbon indicator has been on of the most accurate indicators through bitcoin history, it's based entirely on hashrate, indeed, you can't use hashrate to predict bitcoin price the next hour or two, but for mid-range timeframes, it does make a ton of sense in terms of predicting trend reveals.

The basic theory of the Hash Ribbon indicator is that the Bitcoin market tends to reach a bottom when miners capitulate.

Miners often capitulate — or sell BTC — when Bitcoin becomes too expensive to mine relative to the cost of mining. That usually occurs when the price of Bitcoin goes through an intense correction where it nears or drops below the breakeven price of mining.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-hash-ribbon-signal-confirms-great-bull-run-says-analyst

[pooya87]

but sometimes you see people try to predict bitcoin price based on hashrate which makes absolutely no sense.

The Hash Ribbon indicator has been on of the most accurate indicators through bitcoin history, it's based entirely on hashrate, indeed, you can't use hashrate to predict bitcoin price the next hour or two, but for mid-range timeframes, it does make a ton of sense in terms of predicting trend reveals.

The basic theory of the Hash Ribbon indicator is that the Bitcoin market tends to reach a bottom when miners capitulate.

Miners often capitulate — or sell BTC — when Bitcoin becomes too expensive to mine relative to the cost of mining. That usually occurs when the price of Bitcoin goes through an intense correction where it nears or drops below the breakeven price of mining.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-hash-ribbon-signal-confirms-great-bull-run-says-analyst

i'm sorry but that makes no sense at all. hashrate is taking direct but delayed effect from the price not the other way around. i could see on very special but rare cases where miners selling could contribute to a small part of the price drop but generally speaking there is no way you can predict something but analyzing the effects that thing is leaving behind aka effects of price on hashrate!

that article from cointelegraph is mostly a clickbait too, trying to advertise yet another investment firm looking for publicity. otherwise finding a handful of coincidences does not look like a valid connection to me.
not to mention that hashrate changes are so much more complicated than just being affected by the price.

[mikeywith]

that article from cointelegraph is mostly a clickbait too, trying to advertise yet another investment firm looking for publicity. otherwise finding a handful of coincidences does not look like a valid connection to me.
not to mention that hashrate changes are so much more complicated than just being affected by the price.

I agree that the article or in fact, most articles from that website are b.s, Ignore the rest of the article, i only referenced it to save myself the trouble of explaining how the hash ribbons indicator works.

Now it is up to you to believe or disbelieve that miners capitulation is a huge factor which effects price directly, this is is not a matter of a single coincidence or a few random events, it is simply humen psychology , just like the fear and greed indicator.

Miners bet on bitcoin price to go into their favour, and since the majority of miners lose money just like how the majority of traders lose money, it is essential to know when all of these people are capitulating because that is when the market is about to make a shift in direction, and of course, when they are optimistic and going all in, it is time to leave.

Having said that, this is yet another indicator which is subject to failure just like any other metrics people use to estimate price.