China's five largest mining pools control nearly 50% of the Bitcoin network's computing power

A new analysis from TokenAnalyst found that five mining companies (all based in China) control 49.9% of all computing power on the Bitcoin network, the largest concentration of mining power in history.

The five largest mining companies (AntPool, BTC.com, BTC.top, F2 Pool and ViaBTC) are all available through the hashrate sharing platform BitDeer, which allows consumers to rent mining hashrate without having to purchase or set up crypto mining hardware. BitDeer effectively acts as a connecting organization between the five mining pools, each of which allows individual miners to extract resources and share in the newly minted Bitcoin as a reward. The problem is that miners with more than 50% of the hashrate could disrupt the network, increasing the possibility of double counting tokens, stopped payments, and stalled transactions.

TokenAnalyst said in the report: Once consumers pay BitDeer for a plan, they can allocate that computing power to any partner mining pool. Does this really make any difference? What prevents these entities from merging into a single large entity is simply "maintaining a certain degree of separation by having independent addresses that receive rewards."

The main attraction of Bitcoin has always been that it has no central authority and does not rely on a specific government or bank. But in recent years, most transactions have been controlled by a few exchanges. Now network operations also seem to have become highly centralized. (Odaily Planet Daily)

Original URL: http://suo.im/61R3Sw