It stands out in this new information that many of the mining pools now identified have only just started operating and already amass large amounts of the hash rate of the Bitcoin network.
Part of the enigma around Bitcoin mining has been revealed. New information available on the site BTC.com, operated by the Chinese manufacturer Bitmain shows that all of the Bitcoin pools or mining pools are known. An analysis of the data indicates that 95% of the blocks mined in the last month were processed in China.
Until a few days ago, it was almost impossible to know who all the pool operators involved in Bitcoin mining were. Widely consulted sites like blockchain.com or blockchair.com still show a large percentage of “unknown” groups: around 15% and 5%, respectively.
Now, with the new data that BTC.com shows, it is possible to know who is mining 99% of the blocks on the Bitcoin network. From the well-known and long-lived SlushPool, from the Czech Republic, or F2Pool, from China to the most recent Lubian pools, TATMAS, or the one operated by Binance; the latter, all Chinese.
For instance, the 58coin & 1thash group, launched in August 2019, boasts a processing power of 10.36 exahashes per second (EH / s), representing 8.12% of the total processed by the Bitcoin network. The same happens with the pool of the OKex brokerage house, which, having started operating in June 2019, already has 6.8 EH / s, more than 5% of the hash rate of the Bitcoin network.
Still, other newer pools also surprise with great processing powers. Binance Pool launched in April 2020, and Lubian, which started operations in May 2020, has hash rates in the order of 7.4 EH / s and represents almost 6% of the total network, each. The latter pool, despite being Chinese, surprised the mining community by having its operations in Iran.
In the Middle Eastern country, the cost of electricity is 1 cent compared to 30 cents in China, according to the pool managers. Besides, the Iranian government recently legalized mining and is pushing it even in the country’s power plants.
The most powerful pools are still Poolin (2018), with 19.5 EH / s and 15% of the power of the Bitcoin network; F2Pool with 17.76EH / s, 14% of the processing; BTC.com with 15.69EH / s (12.3% of the network); and Antpool with 11.84EH / s, which represent 9.28% of the more than 120 EH / s that the Bitcoin network now owns.
95% of Bitcoin Blocks are Mined by Chinese Operators
When analyzing the data from another perspective, it is observed that during the past month 96.5% of the Bitcoin blocks were mined by Chinese groups. Only 3.5% was mined outside the Asian country by SlushPool, which is striking knowing that this was the first mining pool in history, which mined its first blocks in January 2012.
By Jenson Nuñez.
