While the Bitcoin network stays fairly decentralized in the meantime, there is a piling pressure among the largest Bitcoin mining companies to control the majority of the mining hash rate. The race sets AntiPool, which controls 17.60%, ViaBTC 14%, Binance Pool 11.6%, Poolin 11% of the total 14.5T hash rate, and many other mining companies that are adding their resources.
Despite some energy concerns about Bitcoin mining, the latest massive purchases of mining rigs across the industry tell a story of a pending shift in Bitcoin mining rankings as far as control of hash rate is concerned. A quick check on the latest mining rig purchasing deals announced in the news reveals that billions of dollars worth of mining rigs have been dealt with in July alone. It only means that each company wants to control a larger share of the mining hash rate.
When a company increases its share of hash rate, it certainly means a better possibility to mine more Bitcoins. And in the words of Genesis Digital Assets CEO Manuel Stotz, Bitcoin is going to be the most important technology for the financial inclusion of the global poor and unbanked and mining would provide the security needed to make that happen. Because Bitcoin will become scarcer and more valuable as time goes, of course.
Marathon Digital Holdings probably marks the largest shift of hash rate control at the top three because the company announced today Monday that it has bought an additional 30,000 Bitcoin mining rigs from Bitmain. The latest order adds to their previous 100,000 Bitmain’s S19 series machines bought and expected to be delivered by Q1 2022. That puts the company’s estimated total hash rate power at 13.3 EH/s – meaning it will become the third-largest mining company by controlling 12% of the total mining hash rate as of Aug. 1. It will be in the top three spots.
“Increasing our percentage of the total network’s hash rate increases our probability of earning bitcoin, and given the uniquely favorable conditions in the current mining environment, we believe it is an opportune time to add new miners to our operations,” said Marathon Digital CEO Fred Thiel.
Meanwhile, Chinese mining firms have either been losing control, closing, or relocating, shedding so much of their mining hash rates. With current adjustments in China as far as Bitcoin mining is concerned, the USA is growing stronger in mining activity and now supports 17% of the total global mining hash rate from April this year. It had 4% before disruptions in China. China’s had fallen from 75.5% to 46% even as largest China-based companies like ViaBTC became worst affected.
The Foundry USA Pool, which constitutes of Blockcap, Greenidge, Hut 8, Bitfarms, Hive, BitDeer, Bit Digital and Foundry companies and controls 7% of the total hash rate, is also growing stronger for instance. That would make them enter the list of the top 10 largest mining by hash rate power. In July alone, it added 800 petahashes per second (PH/s) of hash power following new purchases from Hive and yet more than 8,300 rigs bought by Greenidge in July.
In July alone, there have been huge purchase deals of mining rigs from other companies including BIT Mining, which recently acquired an additional 2,500 new Bitcoin mining machines to add a total hash rate capacity of 165 PH/s. The company has already deployed multiple mining rigs in Kazakhstan to shift from China.
Gryphon, another mining company, also entered the top 15 Bitcoin miners in July after adding a total of 0.72 exahashes per second in hashing capacity.
Genesis Digital, which has mined $1 billion worth of Bitcoin since starting 9 years ago, recently announced they want to expand their hash rate control to more than 2.6%. They would become top 10 according to the chart by BTC.com. Also, after buying thousands of Antiminers from Bitmain this year, Riot Blockchain saw its hashing capacity increasing by more than 406% from the figures posted a year ago. At 3.8 EH/s, the company will control more than 3.5% of the total hash rate.
via ZyCrypto