Beijing's most impressive crackdown on Bitcoin to date wasn’t enough to kill Bitcoin in the authoritarian state, new data from the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance shows.
China still claims some 21% of the Bitcoin network’s hashrate, CCAF’s survey of the Bitcoin mining network shows. CCAF has tracked Bitcoin’s global footprint since September 2019, including the great hashrate migration from mainland China to central Asia and North America.
The survey previously showed a complete absence of Bitcoin mining within the Middle Kingdom from July 2021 until the latest update, released Monday. The update shows mining recommenced in China as early as September 2021.
CCAF’s data is only a partial snapshot of the network, however. Three pools constituting 33% of the Bitcoin network voluntarily submit highly manipulable IP data from their clients in order to produce the survey. The small sample size and unauditable nature of the snapshot should be taken into account by the reader. It should also be taken into account that the CCAF data is likely the best estimate available.
CCAF included a new map of US-based hashrate. After the Chinese miner dispersion, the US mining industry increased from a mere 3% to a majority position at 38%. CCAF found Georgia to hold the lion’s share of hashrate at 31%, followed by Texas, Kentucky and New York, respectively.
The snapshot runs counter to data findings disclosed by Foundry in October 2021. Foundry – the largest pool provider in North America and fifth-largest globally at that time – disclosed New York, Kentucky and Georgia as the leading states with 19.9%, 18.7% and 17.3% of hashrate, respectively.
Bitcoin’s hashrate has grown 60% since the Foundry survey, up from an estimated 135 EH/s to 220 EH/s.
Photo by Christian Lue on Unsplash
