Back in 2011, you would hear about college seniors using computer science labs to mine Bitcoin. By late 2017, however, it became pretty clear that if you didn’t have an ASIC mining machine, you had no chance of becoming a serious miner. Large mining pools steadily controlled a considerable portion of the Bitcoin network’s computing power.





This wasn’t always the case. In the early days of Bitcoin's growth, mining was more distributed. As digital currency continued to grow, mining became more lucrative. Now, hashrate is increasingly concentrated in the hands of several large mining pools. The chart below shows the historical distribution of Bitcoin computing power since 2016.













Both Antpool and BTC.com belong to the mining giant Bitmain. At present, Antpool and BTC.com control 29% of total hashrate. This is down from over 41% in June. In just the last 6 months, Bitmain’s mining pools have lost 28% of their market share, marking a shift toward greater decentralization of BTC mining.







Many mining pools, even large ones, have a hard time holding on to their power. This reflects the overall turbulence of the industry. BTCC, for example, steadily lost influence since 2017, and now is hardly relevant at all.



