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BTC Hashpower Swells: Bitcoin Network Touches 185 Exahash, Hashrate Climbs 18,400% Since 2016

19/03/2021 by Idelto Editor

During the last week, the Bitcoin network’s hashrate has jumped to a record high of 185 exahash per second on March 14, 2021. The hashpower has relentlessly continued to rise, climbing a whopping 18,400% in five years since January 21, 2016.

Bitcoin Price Jumps Over 1,500% in a Year, Hashrate Climbs 18,400% in Five Years

The price of bitcoin (BTC) touched an all-time high (ATH) reaching $61,782 per BTC on March 13, 2021. It happened pretty much one year after the crypto asset’s most recent market bottom on March 12, 2020. The price had risen over 1,500% since that day, otherwise known as ‘Black Thursday,’ which saw BTC prices slide to $3,850 per unit.

BTC prices are down over 6% since the recent ATH and the value of the leading crypto asset has driven mining profitability. A touch after BTC hit the ATH in value, BTC miners ramped up the hashrate to 185 exahash per second (EH/s) the day after on March 14, 2021.

Bitcoin mining is extremely competitive and with the hashrate so high, the network’s mining difficulty is also at extreme heights as well. Currently, it’s never been more difficult to mine the leading crypto asset than it is today with charts currently measuring 21.7 trillion.

There are 18 mining pools directing hashrate at the BTC blockchain and F2pool was the number one miner for the last few months on end. However, F2pool’s hashrate has slid some and Poolin now captures the number one bitcoin miner in terms of hashrate distribution.

Poolin and F2pool have close to the same speeds as Poolin now commands 26 EH/s with 17% of the hashrate and F2pool captures 24 EH/s and 15.7% of the overall hashrate. The pool operated by crypto firm Binance holds the third-largest position with 12% of the BTC hashpower.

185 EH/s is a phenomenal speed and other sites like fork.lol recorded upwards of 189 EH/s on that day. To compare this with speeds five years ago data shows BTC’s hashrate has jumped 18,400% when it touched 1 EH/s that year.

Since 2016 a Single Mining Rig Improved by 1,328%, Institutions Purchase Tens of Thousands of Next Generation Miners

The price of bitcoin (BTC) has surely helped drive the hashrate to the number we are seeing today, however, other technological advances have fueled Bitcoin’s hashpower as well. At that time in 2016 when the hashrate was 1 EH/s, machines like Bitmain’s S9 series were the dominant miners in the industry.

Yet at that time, mining rigs did anywhere between 7 to 15 terahash per second (TH/s). Today, machines manufactured by Bitmain and other competitors like Microbt, process hash at around 100 TH/s. That’s an improvement of 1,328% efficiency per application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) mining machine in five years’ time.

From 2015 through 2016, the 16nm semiconductor was the standard chip at the time for ASIC mining rigs. The company Bitfury had released what was called one of the “fastest” mining chips that could reach around 40 gigahash per second, while keeping the power efficiency around 0.06 joules per gigahash.

In December 2016, Bitfury’s mining pool captured over 9% of the overall BTC hashrate but today Bitfury’s mining pool has zero hash. 16nm ASIC mining chips have been replaced by far more efficient 12, 10, and even 7nm semiconductors. Moreover, companies are preparing to build even faster models with better chipsets in the future.

There’s also been a massive surge in institutional interest in bitcoin mining as large orders of mining rigs have been ordered in 2020 and into 2021. For instance, the company Marathon Group broke records when it purchased 70,000 next-generation bitcoin miners from Bitmain. The publicly listed Canadian bitcoin mining operation Bitfarms revealed the company purchased 48,000 Microbt Whatsminer mining rigs.

Even with a high $0.12 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) the top mining rig the Microbt Whatsminer M30S++ (112TH/s) captures over $32 per day. The Bitmain S19 Pro (110TH/s) series machine gets $32 per day as well using current exchange rates.

What do you think about Bitcoin’s hashrate reaching 185 EH/s and mining rig improvements? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Chinese Mining Pool Poolin Acquires North American Competitor NovaBlock

08/02/2021 by Idelto Editor

China-based mining pool Poolin, which contributes the second-largest amount of hash rate of any single entity on the Bitcoin network, has acquired NovaBlock, a North American pool with offices in St. Jose, California and Calgary, Canada. The takeover will net Poolin an additional 1,681.83 petahashes per second (PH/s) in mining capacity, per data from BTC.com, further increasing its hash power dominance.

In a recent announcement, NovaBlock, which launched in 2019, outlined the planned hash migration, which will take place today. According to BTC.com, Poolin manages a hash rate of 21,909.37 PH/s, so the addition could bring it up to around 23,591.2 PH/s. The world’s largest bitcoin mining pool would still be China-based F2Pool, which has a hash rate of 27,918.42 PH/s.

Poolin is headquartered in Hong Kong and has offices in Beijing, Chengdu and Changsha, China, as well as in Singapore and Berlin.

“I’m guessing Poolin forecasts there will be significant hash rate growth here in North America, and they want to position themselves to have exposure to it,” said Ryan Porter, BitOoda’s head of business development, in an interview with Bitcoin Magazine. “Prior to the acquisition, NovaBlock controlled 1 percent of the Bitcoin network hash rate. There is now a growing field of competitors entering the North American mining pool space, and a number of global mining pools that are expanding their product offering, so the acquisition puts NovaBlock into an incumbent that could keep them competitive and bring stability.”

In its announcement, NovaBlock noted that “Poolin is looking to expand their reach into growing regions like North America.”

As the bitcoin mining industry in North America continues to grow (the number of North American mining pools has more than doubled in the last year, growing from three to seven), it’s possible that more major pools in China will follow Poolin’s lead and look to acquire mining participants based in the U.S. and Canada.

There is growing recognition that U.S. regulators may be increasingly turning their attention to the mining space and the role of Chinese pools. Ethan Vera, co-founder and CFO of Seattle-based mining pool Luxor, told Bitcoin Magazine that miners may be looking for more accountability and stability than Asian pools have to offer.

“North American miners will increasingly want to sell their hash rate to a counterparty that is based in the same legal jurisdiction,” Vera said. “Service license agreements, legal recourse, high profitability and good data and stats are top of mind for institutional miners in 2021.”

In a comment on Bitcointalk.org, a member called Newbie expressed a preference for working with a pool closer to home:

“I was going to try NovaBlock out later this year to see what the profit was going to be but now maybe not,” Newbie wrote on February 6, 2021. “I was mainly drawn to the concept of a North American pool with ownership and control centered in North America.”

With bitcoin reaching new all-time price highs, interest in mining is only bound to increase.

The post Chinese Mining Pool Poolin Acquires North American Competitor NovaBlock appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Interview: Alejandro De La Torre On Hash Rate-Backed Tokens And Taproot

01/02/2021 by Idelto Editor

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This episode of Bitcoin Magazine’s “Bitcoin In Asia” featured Alejandro De La Torre, vice president at Poolin. De La Torre and Poolin are managing taprootactivation.com to improve on the communication and transparency of the Taproot activation process specifically. Poolin has also recently launched a live-traded, hash rate-backed token, one that represents 1 terahash of hash rate in its own mining operation.

De La Torre has been in the Bitcoin data and mining space since 2014 when he founded SendChat, later acquired by wallet and data service Blocktrail, where he led business development until it was acquired by Bitmain. Inside of Bitmain, De La Torre co-founded BTC.com, and led its European office during the SegWit upgrade process. Now, back with former BTC.com colleagues at Poolin, De La Torre leads its global business development.

He discussed Poolin’s hash rate-backed token and why it is gaining traction as a novel market entrant and the progress of taprootactivation.com and what comes next in the activation process. De La Torre also shared his thoughts on recent news in North America around DCG’s Foundry and Blockstream, as well as Bitmain’s split and how he sees the prospects for each separate entity.

The post Interview: Alejandro De La Torre On Hash Rate-Backed Tokens And Taproot appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

While BTC’s Hashrate Remains High, It’s More Difficult Than Ever Before to Mine Bitcoin

26/01/2021 by Idelto Editor

At the end of January 2021, Bitcoin’s network mining difficulty, a measure of how complicated it is to mine a block reward, is higher than it’s ever been during the crypto protocol’s lifetime. Currently, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty is a whopping 20.8 trillion but despite the handicap, bitcoin miners have continued to keep the network’s hashrate running hot.

Bitcoin Difficulty Touches 20.82 Trillion

Bitcoin (BTC) prices have been higher than ever before and despite the temporary dip on January 21 below the $30k handle, the crypto asset has managed to remain above that range. This has made it so a great number of ASIC mining machines are profiting at the current price per BTC including older generation mining rigs.

Nevertheless, the current Bitcoin (BTC) mining difficulty is the highest it’s ever been in the last 12 years of operation. The difficulty is essentially how hard it is for a miner to mine a BTC block or basically find a hash below a given target.

The higher the difficulty, the more complicated it is for all the mining participants trying to find bitcoin blocks on any given day. At the time of publication, public data shows the BTC chain’s difficulty is approximately 20,823,531,150,111 or 20.82T.

Small Difficulty Jump Expected in Less Than Two Weeks, Bitcoin Hashrate Runs Hot Above 150 Exahash

There’re around 22 mining pools dedicating SHA256 hashrate at the BTC chain and typically there were usually only around 18 most of the months last year. Presently, these pools have kept the BTC hashrate above the 150 exahash per second (eH/s) region.

During the last two months, BTC’s hashrate has held solid between 140 to 165 EH/s. At current speeds it seems the difficulty will only jump a hair higher at +0.11% to 20.85T in 12 days.

Right now the top five pools mining BTC today, include F2pool (23 EH/s), Poolin (19.2 EH/s), Binance Pool (17.1 EH/s), Btc.com (16.5 EH/s), and Antpool (12.4 EH/s). These top five mining pools command 61.45% of the entire SHA256 hashrate today, while 17 mining pools capture 38.55% of the remaining hashrate.

What do you think about the current mining difficulty touching a lifetime high? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Proof-of-Work and Yield Farming: Binance and Poolin Launch Tokens Backed by Bitcoin Hashrate

14/01/2021 by Idelto Editor

There’s a new type of token gaining popularity in the crypto space with the launch of coins that are backed by a specific amount of proof-of-work (PoW) hashrate. On January 6, 2021, Binance launched a new project called the bitcoin standard hashrate token (BTCST), a coin that represents 0.1 terahash (TH/s). Furthermore, the mining operation Poolin has also revealed a hashrate token called pBTC35A and each token represents 1 TH/s hashrate with pre-determined SHA256 processing power.

Tokens Backed by Proof-of-Work

The Bitcoin (BTC) network has seen the protocol’s hashrate increase significantly during the last few weeks, despite the network mining difficulty being so high. There have also been substantial numbers of mining rigs added to the network in recent months and exchanges like Binance and Huobi have joined the mining fray.

With bitcoin mining showing significant upside potential, a couple of crypto industry heavyweights have introduced tokens backed by PoW hashrate. Last week, Binance unveiled a new project called the bitcoin standard hashrate token (BTCST), a coin that’s claimed to be backed by 0.1 terahash (TH/s).

“BTCST sets off to solve the problem of limited exit options by bringing exchange-grade liquidity to Bitcoin mining, and in secondary trading,” Binance announced last Wednesday. “BTCST will perform as a leveraged Bitcoin token free from liquidation risk. BTCST will create an efficient market for Bitcoin’s mining power in ways similar to how Grayscale Bitcoin Trust creates institutional liquidity for Bitcoin.”

The crypto trading exchange added:

BTCST is collateralized by 0.1 TH/s of real-world Bitcoin mining power, which is historically proven to be positively correlated to the performance of the digital gold, and hence the value of BTCST climbs along with the current skyrocketing Bitcoin market.

Poolin Launches the Mars Project, Binance PoW Token Audited

However, Binance is not the only business looking to offer a PoW mining token as the mining operation Poolin has also introduced the Mars Project. On January 11, 2021, Poolin tweeted “Join the first Ethereum-based standardized hashrate protocol, earn wBTC and LP reward. Infinite possibility when PoW mining steps into [an] Ethereum smart contract,” the mining pool further said. Currently, Poolin is the fifth largest bitcoin pool capturing around 9.4% or 14 exahash per second (EH/s) today.

The Poolin minted ERC-20 token is called pBTC35A and the company says each coin is backed by the firm’s PoW hashrate. “The protocol consists of pBTC35A tokens and [the] MARS token,” Poolin’s announcement explains. “Each pBTC35A token represents 1TH/s hashrate with a pre-determined power ratio, mining rigs would be in Poolin Superhashrate’s custody during life cycle. While net profit on wBTC would be distributed per block.”

Poolin says the first batch will be “50,000 pBTC35A (approximately 50PH/s) tokens for Bitcoin (output with wBTC) mining in this protocol and locks up more than 50PH/s machines physically.” Poolin notes that people can obtain the tokens using the inhouse shop ((Basic KYC needed) or via the token’s Uniswap contract. The company further detailed that Ethereum and other PoW mineable coins will be also created, but Poolin doesn’t have a confirmed schedule.

According to Binance Launchpool, the PoW token (BTCST), the organization recently launched has also passed an audit from the blockchain security company Certik, and scored a “98 out of 100 in a security audit.” Users will be able to stake BNB, BUSD, and BTC in separate pools in order to farm BTCST tokens, Binance Launchpool also said.

“Compared to conventional cloud mining, BTCST portrays the decentralized spirit of blockchain, with all mining rewards distribution done by smart contracts that are onchain with full transparency,” Alex Zhao, the cofounder, and CTO of BTCST said last week.

What do you think about the new tokens backed by PoW hashrate? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.