The government of China’s Sichuan province moves to stamp out Bitcoin (BTC) mining activity, citing that growing cryptocurrency prices have led to the escalation of illegal activity under the guise of mining. Sichuan — 10% of the global hashrate According to estimates from Cambridge University, Sichuan is responsible for almost 10% of the global hashrate. In fact, this single Chinese province mines more Bitcoins than the entirety of the U.S. or Russia. China: Bitcoin Mining Map. Source: Cambridge University. Apparently, Sichuan was previously trying to attract the miners in order to combat the economic downturn and employment brought about by …

Bitcoin (BTC) halvings are a little spooky, sort of like the witching hour, and one of the prophecies being murmured about last week was something about a Bitcoin network death spiral. This idea, which isn’t really new, premises a mass exodus of BTC miners whose work creating new parts of the blockchain no longer pays because of a reduction in their rewards. As put forth most recently by Zach Resnick, a managing partner at venture capital firm Unbounded Capital and a prominent supporter of Bitcoin SV (BSV), and summarized by Cointelegraph: “As the halving cuts the block reward, a large …

Questions about Bitcoin’s security cropped up on May 18, when the F2Pool mining pool mined six consecutive blocks on the BTC blockchain, covering block numbers 630804 to 630809. With many exchanges and other Bitcoin-related services relying on just three confirmations before extracting funds, some asked whether this is still secure enough. Is mining hash power becoming centralized? As Cointelegraph reported, since last week’s Bitcoin halving event, hashrate on the network has dropped 30%. This is largely due to the reduced reward for miners, making mining unprofitable on older machines or where margins were already tight. However, the distribution of this …

The Cambridge University’s Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) has launched a Bitcoin Mining Map that provides the average monthly hash rate produced by each country across the globe. The map is informed by the data of mining pools ViaBTC, Poolin, and BTC.com. Cambridge claims the platform is the first to publicly offer a geographic breakdown of Bitcoin (BTC) hash power distribution. China represents 65% of hash power Unsurprisingly, the map shows the vast majority of hash power is located within China — with 65.08% of the global total. That’s almost nine times more than the U.S in second place with …

About 37% of the cryptocurrency community expects Bitcoin’s (BTC) hashrate to be higher one month after the block reward halving than it currently is, according to a recent poll. Cryptocurrency portfolio tracking application, Blockfolio, polled its users on April 27. They asked whether they believe Bitcoin’s hash rate will be higher or lower one month after the halving. The community has a positive outlook Blockfolio’s question was answered by over 8,000 users. Among the respondents, 37% believed that the hashrate would be higher, 29% that it would be lower, and 17% that it would be the same. The remaining 17% …

Leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance launched its mining pool "Binance Pool" on April 27. The pool will operate with zero fees until May 31, after which the rate will be set at 2.5%. The press release for the pool states that large miners can contact Binance to negotiate an extension of the fee-free period. Approximately 15 of Binance’s more than 1,000 employees work full-time towards the pool’s operation. Cross-platform integration Binance Pool supports both Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mining mechanisms. The pool is integrated with the rest of Binance’s platform — allowing miners to easily transfer funds between Binance Pool …

Bitcoin (BTC) has posted a fresh sign of recovery as its hash rate bounces back to levels from before March’s crash. According to data from monitoring resource Blockchain, as of April 15, Bitcoin’s 7-day average hash rate was 114 quintillion hashes per second (h/s). BTC hash rate hits early March levels The last time the network recorded that total was on March 2. In the ten days that followed, the average hash rate grew to a record of 123 quintillion h/s before the events of “Black Thursday” on March 13 halted progress. Bitcoin hash rate 1-year chart. Source: Blockchain Hash …

Following an enormous drop in Bitcoin’s (BTC) network hash rate back on March 26, the premier currency’s hash rate increased between April 4 and April 6 by at least a whopping 33%, exploding from around 85–91 exahashes per second to roughly 122 EH/s, according to various data sources. Historically speaking, Bitcoin’s native hash rate and overall price have been linked quite closely, with the two values — up until now — having shown a strong correlation of 0.77. This is because the higher the hash rate, the more expensive it is for a third-party bad actor to take over a …