Bitcoin’s hashrate has risen from a low of 170 exahash per second (EH/s) recorded this week to the 300 exahash range after a number of bitcoin mining operations from Texas went temporarily offline on December 25, 2022. More than three days. As of December 29, 2022, hashrate distribution statistics show that two mining pools own more than 50% of the global hashrate.
2 mining entities currently produce over 50% of global Hashrate, Bitcoin mining difficulty expected to drop significantly within 5 days
The computing power behind the Bitcoin (BTC) network rose to the 300 EH/s range on the evening of December 28, 2022. Three days before the hike, BTC’s hashrate fell to 170 EH/s in December. 28, 2022 when Bitcoin miners from Texas reduced their hash power to relieve the network of any excess load.
Much of the SHA256 hashpower returned later in the day, as Bitcoin.com News reported it climbing back up to 240 EH/s by 12:00 PM (ET). After Wednesday’s jump above 300 EH/s, Thursday’s stats show the network’s total hashrate rising by 250.57 EH/s. Furthermore, two mining pools have captured more than 50% of the network’s total hashrate in the past three days.
This of course caused criticism to the network, and the charges focus this week. As of December 29, Mining Pool Foundry USA controls 31.45% of the total hashrate, and Antpool owns 21.87% of the current 250.57 EH/s as of Thursday morning (ET). Between the two mining pools, Antpool and Foundry account for 53.32% of the total BTC hashrate.
F2pool has about 14.25% of the hashrate and Viabtc has about 9.34% of the total as of December 29th. Between all three top pools, Foundry, Antpool and F2pool have about 67.57% of the total and all four mining pools with Viabtc. has dominated 76.91% of the total hashrate over the past three days. Only 12 known mining pools allocate the SHA256 hashrate to the BTC chain, and 5.64 EH/s or 2.46% of the global network are associated with unknown miners.
After the Bitcoin network mining difficulty retargeting at 768,096 blocks on December 19, 2022 increased by 3.27%, the change in network difficulty is expected to drop significantly on January 3, 2023. Current estimates suggest that the difficulty reduction could be 7.39% to 8.1% lower than today’s difficulty figure.
Block generation times were several times faster than the average of 10 minutes at 9:33 minutes, but the majority of recent block intervals exceeded the 10 minute average at around 10:54 minutes. At the time of writing, the most profitable SHA256 Bitcoin mining machine is the Bitmain Antminer S19 XP Hyd. With a hash power of 255 Terahash/second (TH/s).
What do you think about the two bitcoin mining pools that have over 53% of the total bitcoin hashrate this week? Let us know what you think about this topic in the comments section below.
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