It's less about bits and more about entropy. Passwords tend to be low on entropy because of words and patterns present in the sequence. Its almost always going

It's less about bits and more about entropy. Passwords tend to be low on entropy because of words and patterns present in the sequence. Its almost always going to be harder to break passwords by trying every possible hash than doing dictionary attacks against plaintext passwords. 256 bits is around 37 characters of base64 text. Compare that to most passwords and it's safe to say they aren't losing entropy when hashed.