Top six pools mine 95–99% of Bitcoin blocks, risk rises
Top six pools took 90% of Bitcoin hashrate by Dec 2023, while AI compute shifts to the edge. Researchers flag a widening “Centralization Asymmetry” and rising systemic risk.
Galaxy Research says Bitcoin’s hashrate has consolidated versus its early, more distributed setup. At the same time, AI infrastructure is decentralizing via edge deployments that push workloads to dispersed nodes instead of hyperscaler data centers. Sources: Galaxy Research, Galaxy Research chart.
Pool concentration climbed sharply. b10c’s data shows the top two pools held ~35% of hashrate and the top six ~75% during 2019–2022. By December 2023, those figures rose to 55% and 90%. Source: b10c Mining Centralization Index.
Geopolitical shocks can amplify effective concentration. Iran’s hashrate dropped 77% when conflict knocked an estimated 427,000 machines offline, removing a distributed participant. Source: Coinspeaker on Iran hashrate collapse.
Miners are reinforcing the divergence. Public operators are pivoting capacity to AI data centers, shrinking independent hashrate and validating the edge compute model. Example: Bitfarms’ Keel Infrastructure shift toward AI. Source: Coinspeaker on Bitfarms’ AI pivot.
The feedback loop is clear. Each exit from Bitcoin mining increases the relative weight of dominant pools, worsens centralization metrics, and heightens the chance of protocol stress and regulatory scrutiny.
