Mysterious bitcoin miners reappear as China cracks down on activity

The hashrate distribution shows known pools that have revealed their identity and have seen recent hashrate losses. As of June 2, 2021, the Bitcoin network hashrate was around 191 exahash per second (EH/s) and today, it is hovering just above the 100 EH/s zone. Pools that saw the biggest losses include mining operations such as Okex, Binance and Huobi.The mysterious hash (classified as “unknown”) captured between 8.63% to 10% of the overall Bitcoin hashrate this Tuesday (22). Today, the “unknown” hashrate ranks fifth among bitcoin miners. Interestingly, pools like Antpool, F2pool, Viabtc, Poolin and Btc.com have seen large fluctuations in terms of hashrate, but remain the top five known miners in the world. Antpool and Viabtc, which are considered ‘Chinese pools’, also command the highest amount of SHA256 hashrate globally of all blockchains that use the SHA256 consensus algorithm.

The return of the mysterious miners

Since the first warnings from Inner Mongolia during the first week of March 2021, stealth mining has soared. Mysterious miners – engaged in stealth mining – have prevailed since the launch of the Bitcoin network. Basically, if someone were to look at the BTC hashrate distribution today, they would notice 18 pools that reveal their identity. But there is another piece of hashrate that is dubbed “unknown” in the hashrate distribution charts on BTC.com and other aggregation sites / hashrate distribution. Since China started cracking down on bitcoin miners, the mysterious hashrate has skyrocketed. Statistics show that stealth mining pools have been finding many more blocks since March 2021, and the unknown hash has increased every month thereafter.The unidentified hashrate started to appear more prominently in November 2020 and in 2021. During the first quarter of 2021, the unknown hashrate increased. After the crackdown in China, the “stealth hash” had a large percentage increase. Unknown hashrate commands about 10 EH/s of computational power in BTC today and over 12% of the processing blocks of SHA256 hashrate in BTC, BCH networks and BSV.The cryptocurrency community understands that mining operations that wish to remain unidentified take advantage of virtual private networks (VPNs) or proxy services to hide their IP addresses.Mysterious hashing was very prevalent in 2018 and 2019, but has greatly diminished in 2020. As of January 2019, the mysterious hash commanded 22% of the Bitcoin blockchain and 17% of the Bitcoin Cash network. At the time, Coin Metrics published a study of the mysterious hash phenomenon.The unknown hashrate almost doubled in three days. Although known mining pools that have been identified have seen percentage hash losses. Coin Metrics detailed that between mid-2015 and mid-2017, most miners disclosed their identity via the coinbase parameter to identify themselves with the name of their pool .“However, in 2018, unknown miners increased,” wrote Coin Metrics, and stressed statistics showed “a newfound appreciation for privacy, or the emergence of miners who have something to hide.” But in late 2019 and throughout for most of 2020, the unknown hashrate was almost non-existent. This trend changed a lot in 2021, and the unknown hashrate returned, coincidentally when Beijing wants to end bitcoin mining and cryptocurrency trading in China. There's probably a reason why new bitcoin miners have sprung up this year that have something to hide. What do you think about the return of the mysterious hashrate after China began cracking down on bitcoin miners in the country? Let us know what you think about this topic in the comments section below.Read more: