According to real-time statistics shown on BTC.COM, the numbers indicating hashpower of the most popular pools are changing constantly. BTC.COM tops the hashpower ranking with a share around 29%, 15% higher than its runner-up Antpool. The top five takes up nearly 75% of the total hashpower, and 8 out of the top ten are Chinese. Among the listed pools, Chinese mining pools take up almost 90% of the global hashpower.

“Hashpower is the life of mining pools. Zero hashpower means dead for a mining pool. This is a world in which hashpower speaks louder,” said a miner surnamed Chen. “(Another pool is) dead,” sounded down without any surprise. This is a small mining pool Chen had access to several months ago.

When the small-scaled mining pools are quietly dying out, the hashrate distribution amongst the largest mining pools is reshuffled. But it is not easy to strike into the top five. The BW.COM, that at once time was among the 4 largest, and had a fairly high dominance in the industry, today dropped to the 10th place with only 1.3% share of the global hashpower.

“Such little hashpower can be omitted. It’s hard to keep going for a mining pool with less than 2% share of the global hashpower.” A large pool founder commented with a glance of the latest hashpower distribution.

Actually the market shares of the most popular bitcoin mining pools has been relatively stable since bitcoin price climbed to its peak in the second half of last year. Most small-scaled mining pools has quit in this game for their feeble condition. There’s little room for them. Even those which once dominated the hashpower world have been out of sight, or dead.

“It is quite easy to start, simply to input some codes and a mining pool then will be ready. In early days, hundreds of miners could make a pool possible. But the rest is difficult, no more miners’ in means uncompetitive hashpower to mine cryptocurrencies. “

Wang Lei (pseudonym), who once ran a pool before 2018, is far-sighted. He chose to sell all his “cash printer” – over one thousand mining machines in the second half of 2017 when bitcoin was on its way to the well-known all-time-high, and shut down his midsize pool.

While a plurality of his friends running midsize pools relocated their mining pools in Northern Europe where cost there is lower with more friendly regulations.

Though Wang thought it might be a big loss to dump all his mining machines, he’s glad he did that back then considering the recent sluggish.