US Takes the Lead In Mining, China at 0%

According to a report by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CBECI), the US now has the largest share of the Bitcoin mining hash rate at 35.4% of the network total. This is the first time that the US has listed at the top of hash rate share, and its share is climbing. So what’s caused the sharp increase in the US hash rate? Earlier this year, we saw China ban cryptocurrency mining, which resulted in miners either leaving China or selling off their hardware. Beyond that, cryptocurrency has become much more mainstream, resulting in more individuals being involved in mining.

Finally, there are large companies being built around mining infrastructure.  There are now a number of hardware offerings made specifically for crypto mining, there are companies that will host your mining rigs and maintain them, and there are individual companies building large mining operations.  Most of these large companies are based in the US.

In the CBECI report, China mining operations have dropped to 0% of the total network hash rate.  CBECI was quick to note that all of these numbers are estimates with some margin of error in there, since VPNs can cause the location reports to be wrong.  “To our knowledge, there is little evidence of large mining operations in Germany or Ireland that would justify these figures. Their share is likely significantly inflated due to redirected IP addresses via the use of VPN or proxy services.”

The top four countries by percentage of hash rate are:

1. US --- 35.4%
2. Kazakhstan --- 18.1%
3. Russia --- 11.2%
4. Canada --- 9.5%