[Vitalik: Bitcoin Mining Hashrate Surpasses 2^96] Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated that, based on rough calculations from average difficulty statistics, Bitcoin mining has recently surpassed 2^96 hashes. Vitalik believes this achievement supports the reasoning for approaching the 128-bit security standard and acknowledges Drake's related perspective. This data reflects the growth in computational power and the enhancement of security within the Bitcoin network.