18 Oct 2021
The U.S. becomes the world’s largest bitcoin miner
Research by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance suggests that China's share of global hashrate has fallen to zero and confirms that nearly half of the global hashrate is now in North America.
The Bitcoin mining industry was severely disrupted when over 50% of the hashpower went offline in May. Fortunately, coupled with an ever-increasing bitcoin price, 2021 has turned out to be a very lucrative year for bitcoin miners.
Natural protocol incentives have induced a remarkable path to hashrate-recovery: the U.S. alone accounted for 35.4% of the global hashrate at the end of August—up from 16.8% at the end of April.
Kazakhstan and Russia are following the U.S. and now account for 18.1% and 11% of global hashrate, respectively, up from 8.2% and 6.8% in April.
It should be noted that Mainland China likely still has some rogue miners mining in the shadows despite the recent crackdowns. Nevertheless, Chinese miners account for a fraction of what they did a few months ago, making Bitcoin's ties to China less relevant today than earlier.