We’ve rebranded our newsletter to Miner’s Digest ;)
These past two weeks in the world of mining have been tumultuous for cryptocurrency and Bitcoin in particular. With the end of the wet season, Chinese miners migrate to colder regions of the country to continue their operations.
As a result, we are looking at reduced activity in bitcoin mining. Which in turn, might extend the next difficulty adjustment period. Current projected adjustments point to a further difficulty decrease by 14%. This is good for you however, as less competition on the global network means miners have a “higher” chance to earn Bitcoin payouts.
Bitcoin Cash is likely to fork; creating two assets BCHN and ABC. We’ve covered this topic in our blog post about plans for handling the fork. In short, we will provide miners with a 1:1 payout in the event of a fork and also allocate BCH hashrate to BTC temporarily starting November 14th. If you are actively mining BCH with Poolin, we highly suggest you read the linked blog post.
In the world of Ethereum, the ETH 2.0 deposit contract has been officially unveiled, setting up the first steps for migration to POS scheduled for the 1st of December. Ethereum’s migration to full POS will most likely take up to 2 years, ending in 2022 (subject to change), at which point miners should have already made decisions on their next move forward.
Bitcoin Network Stats
Difficulty Snapshot 11/03/2020
Block Height: 651,168
Timestamp: UTC 09:28:10, Tuesday, November 3rd, 2020
Difficulty Period: 16 days
Difficulty: 16.79 T (-16.05%)
Average Network Hashrate: 120.12 EH/s
Average Block Time Interval: 715 seconds
Average Hash price: $0.1247/TH/DAY
Poolin Hashrate: 16.84 EH/s (-22.3 %)
Poolin Workers: 592,396 (-21.08 %)
Hashrate Analysis
Bitcoin’s network hashrate has been consistently dropping for the past two weeks as miners in China are packing up their operations for seasonal migration. Without the cheap electricity of the wet season, they are moving from Sichuan to colder regions with cheaper electricity prices.
It usually takes two weeks for mining farms to migrate to another location, so we expect most of the 40EH/s of network hashrate to return between the 10th and 14th of November.
Difficulty analysis
Resulting from the miner migration, the difficulty has dropped in the previous adjustment period. Average block time is still on the rise, potentially pointing to another drop in difficulty if this trend holds. We do expect some of the migratory miners to begin coming back online so things may change yet again soon enough.
Hashprice analysis
The migration, paired with Bitcoin’s massive price spurt has caused a 66.19% increase in the hashprice value for Bitcoin miners. The effects of the migration are temporary as miners restart their workers and plug them back into the network. However if BTC prices continue to grow, we may end up retaining a significant part of this hashprice increase.
Poolin hashrate
Following the difficulty adjustment on October 17th, workers and hashrate started dropping reaching a bottom on the 26th. This is a temporary loss of ~20% of our worker count and consequently hashrate. Most other competing pools also experienced a +/- 20% decrease. We expect this to normalize soon.
Zcash network stats
Difficulty Snapshot 11/04/2020
Block Height: 1,030,110
Timestamp: UTC 08:50:55, Wednesday, November 4th, 2020
Difficulty Period: 1 hour
Difficulty: 58,011,279.30
Network Hashrate: 6.18 GSol/s
Average Block Time Interval: 76 seconds
Average Hash price: $0.05/KSol/DAY
Poolin Hashrate: 1.75 GSol/s
Poolin Workers: 26,891
Analysis
Zcash mining has not changed in any significant way since October 17th, keeping relatively stable on all fronts. Looking forward, this may change following the first Zcash halving event expected to happen on November 18th named Canopy. The halving will reduce the reward from 6.25 ZEC to 3.125 ZEC. In other news, wrapped Zcash is now a thing, with a prospect for being an interesting asset for DeFi, also South Korea bans privacy coins, Zcash included.
Network Hashrate
Poolin Hashrate
Difficulty
Hashprice
Litecoin Network Stats
Difficulty Snapshot 11/01/2020
Block Height: 1,939,392
Timestamp: UTC 18:49:23, Sunday, November 1st, 2020
Difficulty Period: 3.83 days
Difficulty: 6,204,264.01
Network Hashrate: 180.22 TH/s
Average Block Time Interval: 141 seconds
Average Hash price: $2.14/GHs/DAY
Poolin Hashrate: 37.78 TH/s
Poolin Workers: 80,157
Analysis
Litecoin’s network hashrate and difficulty were trending downwards for the majority of the past two weeks. Recently, the reduced difficulty is boosting Litecoin’s hashprice and profitability and the downward trend seems to be reversing with hashpower returning to the network. The Poolin pool is leading Litecoin mining with ~20% of the network’s hashpower. In the news, Venezuela to incorporate Litecoin to the national remittance platform, Litecoin’s price rises after PayPal inclusion, and MimbleWimble upgrade relaunched on the testnet.
Network Hashrate
Difficulty
Hashprice
Poolin Hashrate
Ethereum network stats
Difficulty Snapshot 11/04/2020
Block Height: 11,190,179
Timestamp: UTC 10:38:00, Wednesday, November 4th, 2020
Difficulty Period: Each block
Difficulty: 3,315,162,503,446,053
Network Hashrate: 252.85 TH/s
Average Block Time Interval: 13.25 seconds
Average Hash price: $0.02/MHs/DAY
Poolin Hashrate: 1.68 TH/s
Poolin Workers: 11,035
Analysis
Ethereum’s stable mining continues, with no significant changes to hashrate, difficulty, and earning potential. However, news regarding Ethereum’s 2.0 smart contract launch have been received positively by the community. ETH 2.0 is now set to launch on December 1st if the community manages to stake at least 524,288 ETH across 16,384 validators one week before the date. In the event that this threshold is not reached, ETH 2.0 will launch 7 days after the conditions have been met.
Network Hashrate
Poolin Hashrate
Difficulty
Hashprice
Decred network stats
Difficulty Snapshot 11/04/2020
Block Height: 499,392
Timestamp: UTC 09:40:33, Wednesday, November 4th, 2020
Difficulty Period: 12 hours
Difficulty: 29,349,276,446
Network Hashrate: 299.61 PH/s
Average Block Time Interval: 299 seconds
Average Hash price: $0.07/THs/DAY
Poolin Hashrate: 127.71 PH/s
Poolin Workers: 3,927
Analysis
Downward fluctuations for Decred’s network hashrate, with a relatively quick recovery at the start of the month. The dip affected difficulty and profitability temporarily. However, with most of the hashpower back on the network, Decred is stabilizing. In the news, Decred launches a decentralized exchange DCRDEX with no trading fees.
Network Hashrate
Difficulty
Hashprice
Poolin Hashrate
Dash network stats
Difficulty Snapshot 11/04/2020
Block Height: 1,366,038
Timestamp: UTC 12:42:08, Wednesday, November 4th, 2020
Difficulty Period: Each block
Difficulty: 306,595,909
Network Hashrate: 6.10 PH/s
Average Block Time Interval: 156 seconds
Average Hash price: $0.01/GHs/DAY
Poolin Hashrate: 354.06 TH/s
Poolin Workers: 1,923
Analysis
Dash’s hashrate is relatively stable with minor losses nearing the start of the month. Naturally, the difficulty and hashprice have remained consistent. In the news, Dash has launched the Dash Platform v0.16, a technology stack used for building dApps on the Dash network. Furthermore, Dash is now banned in South Korea, with growing global sentiment against privacy coins.
Network Hashrate
Difficulty
Hashprice
Poolin Hashrate
Nervos network stats
Difficulty Snapshot 11/04/2020
Block Height: 3,145,897
Timestamp: UTC 11:20:39, Wednesday, November 4th, 2020
Difficulty Period: 4 hours
Difficulty: 144.69 PH
Network Hashrate: 14.62 PH/s
Average Block Time Interval: 8.73 seconds
Average Hash price: $3.06/THs/DAY
Poolin Hashrate: 597.12 TH/s
Poolin Workers: 611
Analysis
Compared to a few months ago, Nervos (CKB) network hashrate is much more stable, as evidenced by the difficulty chart. Small pockets of volatility here and there, however overall it is trending upwards. The Eaglesong algorithm may be a good alternative for current Ethereum miners once the full POS transition is complete. In the news, Nevros integrates with HedgeTrade for community price predictions, got called out as a “good” network by a VC, and received plenty of coverage thanks to Huobi’s Sharlyn Wu.
Network Hashrate
Difficulty
Hashprice
Poolin Hashrate
Bitcoin Cash network stats
Difficulty Snapshot 11/04/2020
Block Height: 660,066
Timestamp: UTC 13:37, Wednesday, November 4th, 2020
Difficulty Period: Each Block
Difficulty: 248,876,597,092.15
Network Hashrate: 2.09 EH/s
Average Block Time Interval: 626 seconds
Average Hash price: $0.12/THs/DAY
Poolin Hashrate: 24.77 PH/s
Poolin Workers: 6.343
Analysis
Bitcoin Cash’s hashrate is trending downwards and with good reason. The network is planning a fork. Poolin will temporarily suspend BCH mining. BCH mining will be restarted after the network has stabilized.
The fork is initiated based on disagreements regarding the future of Bitcoin Cash. On one hand, The Bitcoin ABC camp led by developer Amaury Séchet, and on the other, the BCHN camp, led by Roger Ver. 76.3% of BCH blocks have signaled support for BCHN over the last 7 days, compared to 1.0% for ABC.
Full details in our latest blog post on the topic.
Network Hashrate
Difficulty
Hashprice
Poolin Hashrate
Bitcoin SV network stats
Difficulty Snapshot 11/04/2020
Block Height: 659,836
Timestamp: UTC 14:12:17, Wednesday, November 4th, 2020
Difficulty Period: Each Block
Difficulty: 188,871,341,917.53
Network Hashrate: 1.29 EH/s
Average Block Time Interval: 533 seconds
Average Hash price: $0.10/THs/DAY
Poolin Hashrate: 1.33 PH/s
Poolin Workers: 400
Analysis
Miner hashpower on the BSV blockchain is falling, most likely due to low profitability. However, it remains largely unexplained. With difficulty dropping down, the hashprice has recovered to a similar level comparable to BTC and BCH. In the news, Silkroad address moves 69,370 BTC, BCH, and BSV to a new bech32 address, as reported by CipherTrace. This transaction has been linked to the United States Government. BSV was also listed on centralized crypto exchange NovaDAX with a BSV/EURO pair.
Network Hashrate
Difficulty
Hashprice
Poolin Hashrate
Poolin News Update
First Poolin Blockchain Weekend Conference held on the 31st of October in Zhengzhou, Henan Province.
Poolin Blockchain Weekend is a series of conferences organized every two weeks by Poolin.
Zhengzhou is the first city that hosted a Poolin Blockchain Weekend event. Here our guests could learn more about Poolin’s One-Stop Mining Investment Solution, the basics of the blockchain & cryptocurrency mining industries, see the new Antminer S17, receive Bitcoin red packets, and participate in a Q&A session. The event lasted over an hour and a half.
The event was positively received by the community in Zhengzhou. Some participants were inspired to start their own cryptocurrency mining journey. Poolin Blockchain Weekend is organized by Yuki and Danny, providing a safe space where people can learn about crypto mining, meet their peers, and collaborate.
The next event will take place in Shenyang, Liaoning province. Stay tuned!
Stay up to date with the Miners Digest by following us on Medium!
