The Great Amerian Mining Migration

by Dominik Poiger, Head of Product Management at ICONIC Holding

The Great American mining migration is now complete.

As we pointed out previously, Chinese miners had to leave Mainland China and set-up shop elsewhere. Past months data had already indicated that most of these miners would either sell their mining rigs, close up shop or settle for Kazakhstan or the United States. This process now looks complete as the share of miners from China has fallen to 0% according to data from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (https://cbeci.org/). Simultaneously, the US’s share of the network has increased to now 35% from 4% in September 2019 and from 17% since the start of the miner migration.

Source: Iconic Funds, Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance
* To CBECI’s knowledge, there is little evidence of large mining operations in Germany or Ireland that would justify these figures. Their share is likely significantly inflated due to redirected IP addresses via the use of VPN or proxy services.

Naturally, China’s provinces share of the hash rate has gone to zero.

Source: Iconic Funds, Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance

Meanwhile the hash rate, which is an indication of the strength and security of the Bitcoin network, has recovered substantially from its low in July 2021 but still sits approximately 20% below the all-time high from earlier this year.

Source: Iconic Funds, Blockchain.info

We pointed out that China’s mining ban was potentially a good sign, especially on the background of increasing ESG narratives. Miners moving to more energy-efficient jurisdictions, such as the US and Canada are increasing the overall effectiveness of the Bitcoin network and are actively decreasing the perceived carbon footprint of the mining community.

In July 2021 the Bitcoin Mining Council (BMC), a voluntary global forum of Bitcoin mining companies and other companies in the Bitcoin industry, announced the findings of its first quarterly survey focused on two important metrics: electricity consumption and sustainable power mix. While this survey was far from covering all miners, it covered roughly 32% of global hash rate. This survey showed that members of the BMC and participants in the survey were utilizing electricity with a 67% sustainable power mix. The BMC estimates, that the global mining industry’s sustainable electricity mix has grown to approximately 56%.

This article is a follow up to our two previous articles published in June and August 2021, named “Is Bitcoin’s Carbon Footprint Improving?” and “An Update on Bitcoin’s Hash rate”.