Foundry USA and Antpool now control over 50% of Bitcoin’s total hash rate

Experts noted that the Bitcoin mining model of big companies includes some big issues and said that the ethos of Bitcoin as a decentralised cryptocurrency is under threat. 

Bitcoin (BTC), the top crypto asset by market cap, is mainly known for its highly decentralised nature. The current trade price of Bitcoin is $61,355 & this trade price is 12% down over the last 7 days. 

Under the current Bitcoin network hash rate, the network of Bitcoin will go through halving after 19 hours. 

After Bitcoin halving, the reward per block will be reduced to 3.125 BTC from 6.25 BTC and this is a very big problem for small Bitcoin miners because in the end the mining reward for Bitcoin mining companies will be reduced by half. 

According to some experts, there is a huge chance that small Bitcoin mining companies or individual miners will shut down their Bitcoin mining operations, as the cost of operation will be higher than revenue. In that situation, only big mining companies will support Bitcoin via mining operations.

The invention of Bitcoin was only to provide a fully decentralised financial network to help people remain away from the highly centralised & corrupt financial ecosystem. 

Over the last couple of years, many Bitcoin proponents noted that Bitcoin has shifted significantly from decentralised to centralised operations. 

Recently early Bitcoin investor & supporter Roger Ver published his book “Hijacking Bitcoin”. His book further created huge controversy in the Bitcoin community.

Alongside the facts, we can see that Foundry USA and Antpool now control over 50% of Bitcoin’s total hash rate. This is enough to control the Bitcoin network to conduct a 51% network attack with additional easy efforts.

We can also see how the regulatory efforts for this sector impact the decentralisation of the Bitcoin network.  For example, North America’s Blockseer pool not only meets but exceeds the US Government’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) compliance standards, adding to regulatory complexities.

Over the last couple of years, many big institutions have shown an inclination toward Bitcoin mining companies. For example, BlackRock has bought big stakes in two top Bitcoin mining firms, owning 6.71% of Marathon Digital Holdings and 6.61% of Riot Blockchain, totalling nearly $383 million in investments.

Read also: JPMorgan CEO once again calls Bitcoin a “fraud” and a “Ponzi scheme”