While Bitcoin’s Hashrate Grew 22,900% in 6 Years, Block Rewards Are Far Harder to Discover – Mining Bitcoin News

Over the past 12 months, Bitcoin’s hash rate has increased by 85.77%, while 53,547 blocks were mined and 334,668.75 new bitcoins were minted into circulation. More than two dozen bitcoin mining pools have dedicated hashrate against the Bitcoin blockchain over the past six years, and while the hashrate is 22,900% higher, the number of bitcoins found per year is much less.

334,668 Bitcoin minted since September 2021 – Foundry USA captures the most blocks

Miners have accumulated just over 334,668 BTC since September 10, 2021, and 53,547 blocks were found in the last 12 months. Foundry USA has been the top mining pool out of the 28 mining pools that have found blocks over the past year.

Foundry captured 18.14% of the year’s global hashrate average and found 9,716 blocks. Antpool was the second largest miner in the past year, capturing 15.31% of the global hashrate. Antpool managed to discover 8,198 blocks, or 51,237.50 BTC (not including fees) in 12 months.

Antpool is followed by F2pool’s 14.79% of the year hashrate, after the pool found 7,919 block rewards. Binance Pool was the fourth largest mining pool of the year with 10.72% of the 12-month hashrate average.

Binance Pool found 5,738 blocks in the last year, which is equivalent to 35,862.50 BTC (not including fees). Poolin captured 10.69% of the global hashrate in the last 12 months and found 5,724 blocks. Unknown hash or stealth miners represented the 12th largest mining operation with 1.74% of the year’s global hash rate after stealth miners found 934 blocks.

Annual block reward production was the same in 2016 and 2019, but miners discovered much more Bitcoin then

Things are quite a bit different than they were six years ago today, as the hash rate reached 1 exahash per second (EH/s) in 2016. 27 pools mined BTC in 2016 and 55,077 blocks were found that year.

The top mining pool in November 2016 was F2pool with 21.71% of the year’s global hashrate after it found 11,958 blocks that year. F2pool was followed by Antpool, BTCC, Bitfury and BW.com respectively. While the last 12 months have seen a hashrate increase of 85.77%, the hashrate has risen 22,900% since 2016.

While the hashrate is much greater than it was six years ago, the difficulty has also increased a lot. The number of bitcoins miners receive today is also much less. While 334,668.75 BTC were minted last year, in the first six months of 2016, miners found 688,462.50 BTC, because the block reward was 25 BTC per block.

Moreover, during the latter half of 2016, only 344,231.25 BTC were found, but that is still more than the 334,668 coins minted since last September. During the second half of 2016, miners received 12.5 BTC per block instead of the 6.25 BTC per block reward miners receive today and since May 2020.

As of April 2019, 53,522 blocks were found that year and 669,025 new bitcoins were minted in circulation. Btc.com was the top miner at the time, having found 10,468 blocks, and Antpool was the second largest pool, capturing 7,122 blocks in 2019.

While unknown hashrate represented 1.74% of last year’s hashpower, in 2016 stealth miners were virtually non-existent. However, in April 2019, unknown hashrate captured 3.76% of the global hashrate during the 12-month period and found 2,013 blocks that year.

Despite miners getting much less bitcoins per block than they did three years ago or six years ago, the price is higher, creating enough equilibrium to where miners are still profiting from all the expenses they put into mining.

In February 2019, bitcoin’s price was $3,464 per BTC, and the USD value at the time meant that only a few mining rigs were profitable. Using Bitcoin’s February 2019 difficulty, price and $0.12 per kilowatt hour in electricity costs, only three SHA256 mining rigs were profitable.

What do you think of the last 12 months of bitcoin block production? Let us know what you think about this topic in the comments section below.

Jamie Redman

Jamie Redman is the news editor at Bitcoin.com News and a financial technology journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open source and decentralized applications. Since September 2015, Redman has written more than 6,000 articles for Bitcoin.com News about the disruptive protocols emerging today.