The Bitcoin hash rate is generally considered to be a health signifier for the network—a high hash rate means high processing power is present within the network, which also creates greater security. The security of the Bitcoin blockchain relies upon miners working together to build the same chain, or ledger. As miners validate new blocks, the blocks get added to the Bitcoin blockchain. The longest chain of blocks is always accepted as the valid version. It’s important to have only one ledger, otherwise Bitcoin could, in theory, be duplicated, or spent twice. Double spending can be thought of in this way: If a bank kept two different ledgers of transactions, they could each have different information on them and the same money could be spent multiple times. A high hash rate indicates a healthy network, which may, in turn, lead to higher Bitcoin values.