Bitcoin Cash Sees Mining Pool Shift and Hashrate Surpass 4 Exahash
While people have watched the BTC network surpass 100 exahash per second (EH/s), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has been steadily gathering hashrate as well. Since the November 15, 2018 blockchain split, which produced the Bitcoin SV (BSV) chain, BCH hashrate has jumped by more than 3x. Bitcoin cash is often more profitable to mine than BTC and during the last seven days, the BCH hashrate has averaged around 4EH/s.
Also Read: Debate Ensues After 68% of BCH Hashrate Mined by Stealth Miners Bitcoin Cash Hashrate Climbs Over 4 Exahash per Second
It’s been well over a year since BSV split off from the BCH network during the mid-November 2018 hash war. After a week or so, both chains saw hashrates drop below 1EH/s and there was a period of significant profitability changes between BTC and BCH miners. Since then, BCH miners have picked up the pace and are hashing far more than they did following the hash war aftermath. BCH hashrate on January 21, 2020. — Did you know you can earn BTC and BCH through Bitcoin Mining? If you already own hardware, connect it to our powerful Bitcoin mining pool. If not, you can easily get started through one of our flexible Bitcoin cloud mining contracts.
On November 15, just before the split, there was more than 5EH/s hashing away at the BCH chain, but that plummeted to its lowest point on December 17, 2018. Today, according to multiple hashrate recording websites, the BCH hashrate spiked over 8EH/s three hours ago, as recorded by fork.lol. The Bitcoin Cash network’s average during the last week has been around 4EH/s. This means that from mid-December until now, BCH has seen a hashrate increase of more than three times the daily average. Fork.lol measures absolute hashrate in exahash per second using 12-hour averages. Three hours ago the BCH hashrate spiked to over 8EH/s.
In fact, all three SHA256 networks have seen a hashrate rise since mid-December 2018. The BTC hashrate expanded from 32EH/s to this week’s 110EH/s average. Bitcoin SV (BSV) has also seen its network hashrate swell, as it jumped from 1EH/s to 3.3EH/s on January 21, 2020. Coin Dance also shows that BCH has been more profitable to mine in contrast to BTC for more than half of 2019. On January 21, 2020, it was approximately 3.5% more profitable to mine BCH over BTC.
For instance, at 12:15 p.m. EST on Tuesday afternoon, “it is currently 3.50% more profitable to mine on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain,” Coin Dance data informs visitors. Since the recent price spike, BSV has been more profitable to mine against BTC. At the time of writing, “it is currently 11.80% more profitable to mine on the Bitcoin SV blockchain,” says the Coin Dance SV website. The BCH daily mining profitability against BTC shows it was more profitable to mine BCH for more than half of last year. Satoshi Probably Didn’t Envision Three Competing SHA256 Networks
As the BCH network has seen a significant increase in hashrate, a large number of stealth miners have been hashing away at the network. News.Bitcoin.com reported on the topic in December 2019 and the trend has remained consistent. During the last week, BCH has had 49% of the network being hashed by unknown mining entities. In the last 24 hours, unknown miners captured roughly 57% of the network hashrate. BCH hashrate distribution has shifted a great deal in the last few months and the network has seen a number of stealth miners as well.
Since we published that mining report, a mining operation called Taal has appeared on the Bitcoin Cash network. On January 10, a stealth miner who at one time signed BCH block coinbases as “fezi3*,” changed the block signature to “taal.com/fezi3*.” Taal is associated with Calvin Ayre’s Squire Mining Inc. rebrand and BSV backers Craig Wright and Jimmy Nguyen are advisors for Taal. The name Taal is also the name of a volcano that just erupted near one of Ayre’s island villas. Just prior to advertising onchain that it was mining BCH, Taal implemented a concept called Miner ID. The BCH network has jumped more than 3x since the blockchain split on November 15, 2018. Bitcoin SV (BSV) hashrate has increased by 2x since then. All Three Networks Will See a Reward Halving This Spring
Alongside Taal, which captures 2% of BCH blocks today, there are nine other identified BCH pools mining the network. This includes Bitcoin.com, Prohashing, Okex, Huobi, Btc.com, Viabtc, Poolin, Antpool, and Btc.top. Seven of the known BCH mining pools today also mine the BTC chain. There are four BCH miners that mine the BSV chain and two of them mine on the BTC network. No one knows exactly why there’s a lot of stealth miners mining the BCH chain or why there’s been such a shift in mining pools. It’s anyone’s guess as to why BSV miners are mining the BCH chain as well and only the pool operators themselves know the moves they are making. Bitcoin SV hashrate distribution has changed a lot during the last few months and more than 45% of the hashrate is processed by unknown miners.
In the last three days, unknown miners from BTC have dipped to around 3% of the network, but a few weeks prior, BTC had more than 20%. BSV’s hashrate also has a high concentration of stealth miners hashing away at the chain. At press time there’s around 55% of unknown hash processing the BSV chain during the last 24 hours. Despite the uncertainty of why pool operators are stealth mining and the shift in hashrate on all three networks, a number of speculators believe the changes are due to the upcoming halvings. All three SHA256 networks will see a block subsidy reward halving in the spring of 2020 and miners may be steadily preparing for this event.
What do you think about the BCH network hashrate climbing more than 3x the number it held in mid-December 2018? What do you think about the changes and shifts between all three SHA256 networks with BTC and BSV included? Do you think these shifts have anything to do with the upcoming halvings? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.
Image credits: Shutterstock, Coin Dance, Charts.Bitcoin.com, Fork.lol, Wiki Commons, Fair Use, and Pixabay.
Do you want to maximize your Bitcoin Miningpotential? Plug your own hardware into the world’s most profitable Bitcoin mining poolor get started without having to own hardware through one of our competitive Bitcoin cloud miningcontracts. Share this story: Tags in this story BCH, bitcoin cash, Bitcoin Core, Bitcoin SV, blockchain split, BSV, BTC, Calvin Ayre, Craig Wright, December 2018, EH/s, Exahash, Hash War, Hashrate, hashrate changes, Hashrate Distribution, Hashrate Increase, Jimmy Nguyen, mining, SHA256 Networks, Shifts, Squire, Stealth miners, Taal, Unknown Miners Related Uzbekistan to Create National Mining Pool, Launch Licensed Exchange MINING | Lubomir Tassev
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Jamie Redman is a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open source code, and decentralized applications. Redman has written thousands of articles for news.Bitcoin.com about the disruptive protocols emerging today. Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.