Unkown miners closed December having solved a whopping 22% of the total blocks up from 6% at the start of last year. The Bitcoin network is currently less likely to experience an attack given the fact the BTC.com controlled pools have lost dominance over the network.

Bitcoin miner revenues surpassed $5.8Bn in 2018 but the big number isn't all that meets the eye. In January 2018 miners earned a shattering $1.2Bn but closed off the year 83% down brining in only $210Mn in December.

Efforts of small miners turned sour in September 2018 as record hash power made profitability near non-existent with Bitcoin's falling price (Diar, 8 October).

|| FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN?

The small miner exodus could be a possible positive for Bitcoin's network security as smaller miners joined to the hip of large pools began turning off their computing power resulting in a decline in mining pool dominance (see chart).

There could be concerns too. Miners have no obligation to share details on the pools they've joined. Unknown miners could still potentially be part of a pool having opted to not share such details.

At the start of last year, Bitmain led pools, as well as ViaBTC, in which the behemoth hardware company has invested in, controlled 53% of the networks hash power. 2019 kicked off with 39%.

The decline comes despite the three pools combined seeing a massive 55% increase in pooled resources last year as the networks hash power grew unabated hitting 275% in August versus the start of 2018 before it began to peter out.

|| WAITING FOR PRICE BOOST

An increase in Bitcoin's price from $3200 to over $4000 last month resulted in a hash power increase as miners switched on idle equipment. The network this month saw an uptrend for the first time since August recording nearly 50% increase last week with the reversal of the decline that started a little over a month ago (see chart). However this is unlikely to be a sustainable growth should Bitcoin's price fall much further.

|| OVERT ASICBOOST TO THE RESCUE?

Miners running on Bitmain's AntMiner S9 have found a small window of opportunity when the manufacturer released firmware allowing them to run ASICBoost that would see 10-15% in energy savings last October. And this could result in a further increase of hash power as more pools begin to support the upgrade.

But the gains would still not be enough for small miners with wholesale electricity costs to return to market at a sub $5000 BTC.