Bitcoin (BTC) mining remains popular all over the world and the trend shows no sign of slowing down as the next halving occurs next year. Individuals can no longer mine Bitcoin viably, as it takes an immense amount of hardware power to mine at a profitable level these days.

If you’ve spent any amount of time in the market, then you’d know that most mining now occurs in large pools - incredibly sized mining farms with an incredible number of rigs to process the mining algorithm. Other tokens are not as difficult to mine - they’ve not been around as long - but obviously they still reward users with more tokens when mined on a large farm - so you have large mining farms for these too.

I thought it’d be interesting to post a list of some of the biggest mining farms, so here they are:

1. Dalian Mining Farm

The Dalian Mining Farm, located in Dalian, China, is one of the largest mining farms, with a hash rate of 360,000 TH that results in roughly 750 BTC mined every month. It is one of the biggest cryptocurrency mining hubs in China.

China is a particularly popular destination for cryptocurrency mining because of lower electricity rates. Bitcoin mining is known to be a heavy power consumer and the sheer amount of electricity consumed means that it factors in heavily into the profit calculations for Bitcoin mining. What’s more, China is the chief producer of ASICs, which means sourcing and delivery of the necessary equipment is also cheaper.

2. Bitfury

Bitfury was launched in 2011 and is the oldest mining farm on this list. Based in Amsterdam, the farm was started by Valery Vavilov, who has a great interest in the fundamentals of the industry, including the development of the technology and its implementation in financial systems. The founder and company has a heavy emphasis on the implementation of blockchain and adoption encouragement.

3. Genesis Mining

Founded in 2013, Genesis Mining’s focus is cloud mining services, which it felt was missing in the market. While first located in China and Bosnia, it has now relocated to Iceland and Canada, apparently because of both lower power costs and the lower temperatures.

The most interesting feature of Genesis Mining is that it lets users buy contracts to rent mining power, which then lets them mine altcoins through cloud mining. This lets anyone start mining in an affordable manner.

4. Bitmain/Antpool

Bitmain, or Antpool, was launched by Jihan Wu and Micree Zhan in 2013. Following 2017, multiple reports came out that said that the company was suffering from the bear market, but they continue to be in operation and doing relatively well. The company is also behind the popular AntMiner.

The two earned a whopping $4 billion during 2017 and despite the news about mining becoming less profitable, the two continue to earn a significant sum from mining

5. Gigawatt

GigaWatt was launched all the way in 2012 in the state of Washington by Dave Carlson. First called MegaBigPower, a simple mining farm with just a single rig - the farm has now grown exponentially in size to become America’s largest Bitcoin mining farm! Carlson has earned millions from mining and has invested a good portion of that back into the business. He did this in 12 months! Carlson has also begun selling mining equipment to those interested in mining.

Carlson’s story is an encouraging, showing that anyone can get into the game if they put their mind to it and approach the situation systematically.