



Is Bitcoin mining too centralized? To find out, we took a look at Bitcoin’s recent mining pool and compared it to those of two other major cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum. It turns out that that Bitcoin is significantly less centralized than those coins.





First, let’s look at Ethereum. While there are quite a few different mining pools, just two of them, Ethermine and SparkPool_3, control more than 50% of the total network hashrate. Bitcoin Cash is even less decentralized, with two pools, BTC.TOP and BTC.com, controlling more than 53% of the total hashrate.





Now compare that to Bitcoin, where the top two mining pools, BTC.com and Antpool, control just over 29% of the hashrate.





Admittedly, this is a relatively recent development. Back in June, BTC.com and Antpool controlled 41% of Bitcoin’s total hashrate, and that was a cause for concern because the two pools are owned by the same company (Bitmain). This meant that a single entity was close to controlling 51% of the network’s hashing power.





Why does this matter? On proof-of-work blockchains, an entity that controls 51% of hashing power would have the power to confirm a false transaction. Such an attack, or even the possibility of one, could have a negative impact on a token’s value.







