How The U.S. Took The Leading Position In Bitcoin Mining From China

Latest data shows the leading global Bitcoin hashrate now resides in the US as a result of China’s crackdowns on mining.

US Leads In Bitcoin Hashrate, Kazakhstan And Russia Follow After

As per a report from the University of Cambridge, the US is now leading the global BTC hashrate, with Kazakhstan and Russia following soon after.

The Bitcoin “hashrate” is an indicator that shows the total amount of mining power on the BTC network. Here is a map that shows how this metric is distributed around the world:

US seems to be leading the global hashrate | Source: Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

The above map is based on research produced by CBCEI where they collected data from mining pools and used their methodology to plot the hashrate by location. Note that this data is for the end of August 2021.

As the map shows, US is now the number one nation by Bitcoin hashrate as its share now stands at 35.4%. At the end of April, this value was only around 16.8%.

Related Reading | Here Is Why The Russian Crypto Industry Is Trying To Attract Bitcoin Miners

Kazakhstan makes up for 18.1% of the global hashrate now, up from 8.2% since the last data. Russia follows closely after with 11% (up from 6.8%).

The report also shows that the global Bitcoin hashrate dropped around 38% in the month of June due to China’s crackdowns. These crackdowns had the Chinese government clamp down on mining in the country to free up power for other projects.

Related Reading | China’s Crackdown Hits Ethereum Hard As Authorities Shut Down Over 10,000 Mining Rigs

The drop is roughly equal to the country’s hashrate from before the crackdowns started, meaning that miners immediately and simultaneously shutdown their operations.

Once miners from China started relocating in other countries, the Bitcoin hashrate started bouncing back, and now in October it has already almost fully recovered to levels before the crackdowns. In fact, the mining hashrate is looking set to make a new ATH soon.

During the period of low global hashrate, mining difficulty had severely fallen, and profitability rose to high levels for those still active on the network

Western miners won big profits then, and the mining firms in those regions saw their stocks skyrocket in response.

BTC Price

Today, BTC broke $48k for the first time since May, but since then has fallen off a bit. At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s price floats around $57.5k, up 5% in the last seven days. Over the last month, the crypto has gained 24% in value.

The below chart shows the trend in the price of BTC over the last five days:

BTC's price continues to show volatility while it overall moves up | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView

Featured image from Unsplash.com, charts from TradingView.com, University Of Cambridge