The Bitcoin (BTC) mining business is a live ‘winner-takes-all’ race, with mining companies and pools competing against each other for the discovery of the next valid block that guarantees the right to collect the mining reward of 6.25 BTC plus transaction fees. Recent changes in the hashrate spectrum towards AntPool could further impact Bitcoin network decentralization.
Notably, the Digital Currency Group (DCG) subsidiary and American mining pool, Foundry USA, has led this race in the last three years. Foundry dominated the block discovery by 17.78%, for a total of 28,331 Bitcoin blocks mined since October 2020. This data is from mempool.space, collected by Finbold on October 6, 2023.
Bitcoin Pools Ranking, 3-year. Source: mempool.space
However, AntPool has suddenly increased its hashrate power in the last few days, surpassing Foundry USA in the block discovery to become the new leading pool in the Bitcoin mining race. AntPool has kept its second place, closely following the leader for all this time, mining 26,436 blocks (16.59%) in three years.
Bitcoin Pools Ranking, 24-hour. Source: mempool.space
Additionally, these most recent results have also impacted the Bitcoin mining pool industry state in the last three days, as AntPool slightly overcame Foundry USA by a two-block difference. The Chinese mining pool has mined a total of 121 blocks (27.75%), while Foundry was responsible for 119 blocks (27.29%), according to the 3-day pools ranking.
Bitcoin Pools Ranking, 3-day. Source: mempool.space
Therefore, AntPool was able to collect over $20 million in block subsidy, highly rewarding the Bitcoin miners contributing to its generated Proof-of-Work (PoW), to the loss of their competitors allocating hashrate to other pools.
Just like Foundry USA, AntPool demands proper identification (KYC) of all Bitcoin miners plugging their machines in this mining cooperative. In this context, more registered mining companies could now choose to migrate their hashpower to BitMain’s pool, looking for a higher chance of block discovery.
