Bitmain, the largest Bitcoin mining equipment manufacturer in the world, is now disclosing its in-house mining operation’s hash rate to the public in real time. This is possibly to quell speculation and allegations that Bitmain controls so much hash rate that they could 51% attack the Bitcoin network, and also to increase transparency ahead of its initial public offering (IPO) on the stock market.
Its most vocal critics, however, have reacted with cynicism and skepticism to Bitmain’s move. A Tweet by Cobra, the pseudonymous owner of Bitcoin.org, was joined in by scores of other users, clearly unconvinced by Bitmain’s statistics.
— BitcoinBuddha (@THBitcoinBuddha) July 25, 2018
As of this writing on 26 July 2018, Bitmain’s SHA-256 hash rate is 1,692 PH/s, the Ethash hash rate is 340 GH/s, and the Scrypt hash rate is 44 GH/s. These stats are updated every 30 minutes. Currently, the Bitcoin network has a total hash rate of 42,551 PH/s, so Bitmain controls approximately 4% of Bitcoin’s total mining hash rate. At the current block reward of BTC 12.5, this means Bitmain mines BTC 72 per day, worth USD 590,000 at the current market rate of USD 8,200. Worldwide, USD 14.76 million worth of Bitcoin is mined per day.
Bitmain’s scrypt mining hash rate of 44 GH/s is minuscule compared to Litecoin’s overall hash rate of 305,534 GH/s, not to mention that there are many other Scrypt cryptocurrencies besides Litecoin with a large hash rate, so Bitmain controls a drop in the ocean of the global Scrypt hash rate. Likewise, Ethereum’s hash rate is 290,000 GH/s, and Bitmain controls about 0.1% of that.
Clearly, Bitmain has focused its in-house mining operations on Bitcoin, largely ignoring other cryptocurrencies. This is not surprising considering Bitcoin is considered the gold standard of the crypto world; Bitcoin has the best reputation and most liquidity, making it ideal for investment.
Bitmain’s mining pools control a far larger percentage of Bitcoin’s hash rate than the in-house operation. AntPool and BTC.com, owned by Bitmain, control 34% of Bitcoin’s hash rate as of this writing, and Bitmain owns other smaller pools. However, Bitmain only collects a small percentage fee from the total revenue earned by these pools.
Bitmain claims it doesn’t mine with equipment that hasn’t been released to the general public, and has a zero-tolerance policy towards secret mining.
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