Based on the data released recently, a mining pool in the United States of America, Foundry USA, has entered the list of the top five world largest mining pools. The aggregate hash rate has passed 10.10 exahashes/second, making about 7.63% of the total computing power in the world.
The operation of the mining pool is based in North America, and it is run by Foundry, a subsidiary of a Digital Currency Group that revealed its existence in August 2020. Foundry has invested over a hundred million dollars in the mining operations in the crypto space in North America. After successful testing of the waters in a secluded beta mode, the arm of the firm in the USA kickstarted eventually last March.
Stability Ensured by Extra-Cheap Energy
Now that it is obvious that the crypto mining activities has grown into a substantial industry that needs expensive and up-to-date equipment, the chance of finding a new block individually has practically tended to impossibility. Many individual miners are joining forces with established pools to get a part of the block reward.
Having to see the mining pool from North America enter the top five biggest pool in the world is exhilarating, knowing that the Chinese pools have dominated the market for the past few years. The first BTC mining pool in the world, F2Pool, is currently the second-ranked pool after Antpool, owned by Bitmain. Two other mining pools based in China, ViaBTC and BTC.com, are ranked fourth and fifth, respectively.
About 65% of the mining hash rate globally is controlled by China based on the availability of cheap energy in the region. Though, using dirty coal mines in the Xinjiang province doesn’t go very well for the carbon footprint of crypto generally.
Furthermore, the flooding and gas explosion incident recently has made Bitcoin more vulnerable, having dipped the mining hash rate by about 30% overnight.
Aside from the environmental and ethical issues, there might be concerns on regulations as there is criticism flying that the communist state is wielding much power over Bitcoin. Hence, causing the major mining activities to shift to Scandinavia or North America for the sake of stability despite an increase in operating costs.