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Top 50 of Crypto Mining – June 2019

Posted on June 14, 2019 | 2 comments

Today, June 14, 2019, we released the second biannual list of Top 50 cryptocurrency mining pools.

We do this in conjunction with the Top 500 supercomputing list that is released twice a year, in June and November. That list has been a matter of national pride for the US, Japan, China, and many other countries.

Cryptocurrency mining is a specialized form of supercomputing, producing billions of dollars of economic value per year.

In the Information Age, money has become information. Bitcoin is energy converted to information and encapsulated as secure immutable transactions on a time chain. This is money in the Internet, that we call Money 3.0. Currently it is primarily a store of value, a sort of digital gold, but it continues to grow use cases as a medium of exchange, and unit of account.

Cryptocurrency mining operations are large-scale, run on clusters, but also consist of highly decentralized pools that anyone can join and contribute their equipment to the effort, for proportionate rewards. Most mining is done on custom ASIC computing rigs, highly optimized for the relevant crypto consensus algorithm.

Using statistics readily available on the hashing rates and block production rates for the large mining pools, we can tabulate the economic value produced by these pools.

We consider only mined coins, that is, those that use some type of Proof of Work algorithm such as Bitcoin’s Nakamoto consensus.

We do not consider coins created with other types of consensus mechanisms, since they require no significant supercomputer-class computation. This includes coins produced through premining, Proof of Stake, distributed Byzantine Fault Tolerance and the like since supercomputing resources are not involved.

While there are a number of lists that provide hash rates and block production rates for pools mining a single coin, our lists are the first aggregation of which we are aware.

This raises the question as to how to compare mined coins that have radically different hashing rates and whose consensus algorithms, although often similar to Bitcoin conceptually, differ in the details.

We settled on the economic value of the mined coins that are produced. This enables us to make comparisons across coins when rank ordering the list of mining pools.

We compare the dollar value of a day’s mining from a given pool, with that of other pools, across the top eight mined cryptocurrencies.

The top 10 mined coins have market caps above $0.5 billion dollars, and the #1 coin, Bitcoin, as of our snapshot taken on May 30, 2019, had a market cap of $154 billion.

When we rank order the top 50 mining pools we find that the top eight mined coins in economic value are: Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Zcash  (ZEC), Bitcoin SV (BSV), Dash (DASH), and Monero (XMR). All of these except Monero are ASIC-friendly, and production is dominated by ASIC miners and clusters. Monero relies on GPUs.

For Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin we have used 30 day averages as of May 30, 2019 for block production and hash rates; for the other coins 7 day average data was available.

From Table 1  below, which is across all pools, not just the Top 50, we see that total annual economic value run rate (extrapolated from the recent average daily values) is about $8.6 billion. About 2/3 of the economic value created is from Bitcoin production alone, with about $15 million produced per day recently. Ethereum amounts to around one-quarter of that at almost $4 million per day. The next six coins add another $4 million daily. Overall around $24 million per day is currently being mined from all pools.

Table 1: Top 8 Mined Coins (all mining pools, not just Top 50)

Coin Algo New / day Hash Rate Price 5/30/19 US$ Mined per Day M$ Yearly M$
Bitcoin SHA256 1800 47.1 Exa 8701 15.662 5,717
Ethereum Ethash 13,600 172 Tera 284 3.862 1,410
Litecoin Scrypt 14,825 352 Tera 118 1.743 636
Bitcoin Cash SHA256 1800 1.36 Exa 469 0.844 308
Zcash Equihash 7200 4 Giga 87 0.626 228
Bitcoin SV SHA256 1800 2.03 Peta 222 0.400 146
Dash X11 1693 1.68 Peta 172 0.292 107
Monero CryptoNight 1934 329 Mega 95.1 0.184 67
Totals



23.61 8,619

The locations of top mining pools can be multi-country. The next Table summarizes the major host countries for the Top 50 pools; China, the US, and Hong Kong account for 70% of the top 50 pools and almost all of the top 10 operators. China alone is responsible for nearly half of the annual value produced by the Top 50 pools. The Mixed category includes various combinations of US, China, the EU, Russia, or other Asian or European countries. This category has grown as Chinese operators begin to move to other geographies, as a result of pressure from the government to constrain cryptocurrency mining in China.

Table 2. Host Countries, Top 50 Pools

Country # Top Pools Daily M$ Annual M$
China 18 10.717 3911.7
US 11 4.77 1742.5
Hong Kong 6 2.77 1009.6
Mixed 12 2.69 980.4
Other 3 1.18 430.0
Totals 50 22.12 8,074

Table 3: Top 10 Pool Operators (aggregated results)

MultiPools Coins Number Daily M$ Annual M$ Country
BTC(dot) com BTC, BCH 2 3.06 1115 China
F2Pool BTC, ETH, ZEC, BSV, LTC 5 2.76 1007 China
Antpool BTC, LTC, ZEC, BCH, DASH 5 2.38 868 Hong Kong
Poolin BTC, ZEC, LTC, BSV 4 2.26 825 China
SlushPool BTC, ZEC 2 1.62 592 US
BTC.Top BTC, LTC, BCH 3 1.47 537 China
ViaBTC BTC, LTC,BCH 3 1.34 488 US
Huobi.Pool BTC, ETH 2 0.69 251 China
NanoPool ETH, XMR 2 0.50 182 US, EU, Asia
Bitcoin(dot)com BTC, BCH 2 0.34 124 US
Totals
30 16.41 5,990

We have aggregated, for the top 10 operators, their results across all of the top eight coins, and summarized in Table 3. Some operators mine two different coins, others mine as many as five of the top eight. These pools account for, when broken out by coin, 30 of the entries in our Top 50 list. 

The #1 operator is BTC.com based in China, and it produces $3 million a day of economic value. F2Pool, Antpool, and Poolin each produce over $2 million of cryptocurrency per day. These  large operators are responsible for $6 billion of the $8 billion annual production by the top 50 pools. Three of the five largest operators are in China, one is in Hong Kong, and one is in the US.

The winners in this race, for this second list, are Bitcoin, naturally, with BTC.com again as the top pool, and China as the host country for the most top mining pools, including both #1 and #2 positions. Hong Kong has the #3 pool. The US has the second largest number of mining pools.

The economic value of mining has increased substantially. In the first list of November, 2018 we looked at the Top 30 pools, responsible for some $5.5 billion of annual run rate of mining. This new list of Top 50 pools indicates $8.1 billion of annual cryptocurrency creation (even the Top 30 for this list amounts to well over $7 billion).

We intend to update this list again in November, 2019. Suggestions and comments may be sent to: stephen.perrenod@orionx.net

A presentation with the full Top 50 list is available at SlideShare.net: 

References:

Overall: coinmarketcap.com, coinwarz.com, cryptoslate.com

BTC: btc.com 

ETH: btc.com, etherscan.io

BCH: btc.com, cash.coin.dance 

LTC, ZEC, XMR, DASH: miningpoolstats.stream

Cryptocurrency topics: orionx.net/blog

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Crypto Supercomputers: First Aggregated Ranking

Posted on November 20, 2018 | Leave a comment

Working with OrionX, we have just published the first aggregated list of cryptocurrency supercomputer mining pools, ranked by the economic value generated.

I have recorded a podcast about this list with Rich Brueckner, President, InsideHPC. You can listen here: https://insidehpc.com/2018/11/announcing-new-cryptosuper500-list/

A related slide presentation with a complete set of tables is available here: https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/insideHPC/announcing-the-new-cryptosuper500-list

The list is inspired by the Top500 supercomputer list that is released twice a year at the major supercomputer trade shows and conferences held each June in Germany (ISC) and each November in the US (SC).

That list is based on the performance of Linpack, a floating point intensive benchmark that solves a very large system of linear equations.

Supercomputers are based in a single location. They are very large clusters of general purpose CPU-based nodes, often augmented with GPUs, and frequently employing specialized interconnects.

Cryptocurrency mining is embarrassingly parallel. Many nodes can be racing simultaneously to solve the same cryptographic puzzle for the block reward. Mining pools may be centralized, but more likely they are decentralized to various degrees. Mining pools often have many contributors located in many countries, so even the concept of a host nation associated with the pool is fuzzy.

And the hardware employed is typically specialized ASICs or FPGAs, as well as the GPUs frequently found in traditional supercomputing simulation of science and engineering problems.

With mined cryptocurrencies, we must take a different approach and look at economic value.

For this initial list we looked at the top dozen cryptocurrencies by money supply, which is usually called market cap, and that is simply the number of coins created by a certain date, and the coin price on that date.

Of the top dozen, just half of those or 6 coins, are mined: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Monero, and Dash. Other coins are generated by premining, airdrops, or consensus algorithms that avoid mining. As a result they are centralized to varying degrees and presumably less secure.

We chose October 30, 2018 to gather prices, supply, block production, and other statistics. This was prior to the Bitcoin Cash fork into two coins, so only the initial coin is considered for the first list.

Among mined coins, a range of mining consensus algorithms are used. Differing cryptographic hashing protocols may be used. Time windows and block rewards vary. Hashing rates have a tremendous range across the set of coins, from MHash/s with Monero to ExaHash/s with Bitcoin.

Thus we cannot compare across coins based on hashing rates and block rewards per se. Instead we look at economic value. For a given coin, one can rank order by blocks produced.

We ask what is the daily value of a certain coin produced by a given mining pool? How many coins at what price? We took daily averages for the prior week, and where we had better data, for the higher value coins, we used the prior month average daily rate instead. We then extrapolated the annualized value based on the average daily rate.

We compiled statistics for the 30 largest pools on a per coin basis. We also aggregated results for pool operators that produced more than one type of coin.

The first table is a table of average daily and estimated annualized production in millions of USD for the top coins. (With the very recent price slump following the Bitcoin Cash fork, the numbers would now be lower by about 1/4 if prices do not recover for a while). About $4 billion of Bitcoin is mined (minted) per year, and around $1 billion of Ethereum. Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Monero collectively contribute around  $400 million (Dash did not make the cut).

Table 1: Top 5 Mined Coins

Coin

# Top Pools

Daily M$

Annualized M$
Bitcoin

17

11.31

4,129
Ethereum

5

2.77

1,010
Litecoin

5

0.64

234
Bitcoin Cash

2

0.38

140
Monero

1

0.10

37
Totals

30

15.21

5,550

Next is a table of the top half dozen pool operators, combining different coin types if they are mining more than one of the top coins. Three are in China, one in Hong Kong, and two in the U.S.

Table 2: Top Pool Operators (aggregated across top coins)

Top 6 Operators (across coins)

# Top Pools

Daily M$

Annualized M$

Country
BTC.com

1

 1.901 694

China
Antpool

2

1.747

 638

Hong Kong
F2Pool

3

1.585

 579

China
ViaBTC

2

 1.329 485

USA
BTC.Top

2

1.222

446

China
Slushpool

1

1.215

 444

USA
Total

11

9.00

3,285

Bitcoin has its own decentralized, open source, version of a central bank and a clearing house system embedded in the Nakamoto consensus. Bitcoin is presently an emerging economy with over $1 trillion in annual transactions (GDP, gross decentralized product), supported by a very economical and efficient seigniorage of about $4 billion in mining block rewards, or less than 0.4%.

The indicated inflation rate at present is about 4% in supply, but in about 18 months the block reward will have its third halving. This will decrease the block reward to 6.25 Bitcoin from its current 12.5 coins. The inflation rate will drop below 2%.

This is not like your Federal Reserve that issues forecasts and goals. Recently the Fed has been pushing to increase inflation to 2%, and happy that they achieved the increase.

With Bitcoin this decrease in inflation will definitely happen, come hell or high water; it’s math, it’s baked in to the Nakamoto consensus. Relative to the US dollar and fiat currencies in general, Bitcoin will be disinflationary going forward.

The next list will be announced in June, 2019, and we can begin tracking developments in the cryptocurrency space over time.

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