Bitcoin Mining

An Overview of the Current Bitcoin Mining Landscape

Data, trends, and insights in the Bitcoin mining industry

Key takeaways:

• Foundry extends its lead as the top mining pool by production, mining 28.93% of all Bitcoin blocks in the last 7 days.
• Revenue from transaction fees drop as the Bitcoin Ordinals craze cools down.
• Hashrate undergoes a period of relative stability approximately 6 days away from the next difficulty adjustment.

Bitcoin seems to have left behind the turbulence it experienced at the end of last year.

Bitcoin mining hashrate continues to grow in what we could call a miraculous recovery of an industry that was haunted by debt obligations and bankruptcies only a few months ago.

With Bitcoin’s hashrate soaring to new heights, our analysis aims to unravel the current state of the Bitcoin mining industry and landscape.

Foundry and AntPool Mine 52.19% of Blocks

The rise of Bitcoin mining pools has played a pivotal role in mitigating the challenges faced by individual miners, offering greater certainty and stability in revenue generation.

However, it has also led to a critical issue: the centralization of block production.

If we scrutinize the dominance of major mining pools, we discover that only two entities register more than half of the total Bitcoin blocks: Foundry USA and AntPool.

Foundry used to be the largest United States-based Bitcoin mining pool, but after the great hashrate migration caused by China’s crackdown on mining, it quickly became the top pool at a global level.

AntPool, on the other hand, is the pool arm of Bitmain, the world’s largest manufacturer of specialist cryptocurrency mining computers.

In the last 7 days Foundry mined 301 blocks — 29.39 % of the 1,024 blocks mined. AntPool, on the other hand, found 238 blocks — 23.24% of the total.

Transaction Fees Revenue Declines

The Bitcoin Ordinals craze seems to have passed — and with it, the abnormally high transaction fees we experienced for a few weeks.

Ordinals refer to “digital artifacts” in the form of data inscriptions that can be made into each individual satoshi. These can include smart contracts, which in turn enables NFTs. In rough terms, Ordinals are NFTs you can mint directly onto the Bitcoin blockchain.

The unexpected ability to mint NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain led to millions of dollars paid in fees to mint these digital collectibles — an initiative that miners were grateful for.

Now, a few months later, fee revenue is hovering barely above its normal level — around $544K per day. Very far from the $9.4M average during peak Ordinal inscriptions days.

Hashrate Finds Balance… For Now

After a turbulent end of 2022, it’s been nothing but growth for Bitcoin mining hashrate, which has reached one all-time high after another.

This also means that mining Bitcoin was never as hard and competitive as it was this year. Difficulty has forced miners to keep adding hashrate to remain competitive, reaching a new maximum only three weeks ago, when it increased 6.45% to 53.91T.

However, during the last few epochs, hashrate and difficulty have slowed down their pace. Last adjustment was negative, bringing difficulty down by 2.94%. Meanwhile, although we’re still a week away, it would seem that the next adjustment won’t be significant either. So far, we’re looking at a <1% increase.

With the next Bitcoin halving less than a year away, how the mining landscape develops over the upcoming months will surely be entertaining to watch.

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