Bitmain Discloses 88% Drop In Its Own Bitcoin Mining Power

Bitmain's internal bitcoin mining operations are generating 88 percent less computing power than a month ago, suggesting that the industry giant has cut back on capacity.

That the company releases each month, as of May 7, the hash rate of all Bitmain-owned hardware running the SHA265 algorithm - which the bitcoin and bitcoin cash networks are based on - had dropped to just 237.29 quadrillion hashes per second.

Just a month ago, it was at 2,072 PH/s. Bitmain, based in Beijing, manufactures mining equipment that it sells to others and also mines coins for itself.

This figure then dropped below 1,700 PH/s in March, in line with the overall decline of the bitcoin network's total computing power since November of last year as bitcoin's price plunged below $4,000 during the same period.

Partly as a result of that drop, Bitmain's share of the bitcoin network's total computing power has also shrunk from four percent to now just 0.4 percent.

Assuming all the hashing power comes from the more widely used AntMiner S9, each with a hash rate of 14 tera hashes per second, Bitmain may have ceased using more than 130,000 machines to mine for itself.

As recently as March, Bitmain was said to be planning to deploy $80 million worth of its own machines this summer.

To be clear: none of this should be taken to mean Bitmain has shut down all its mining equipment.

Even as the company's share of computing power on the network has declined, the denominator has grown: bitcoin's total hash power just reached a six-month high over 58,000 PH/s on May 2, according to data.

The hash rate of the bitcoin cash network - which Bitmain has vocally supported - has been steady around 2,000 to 2,500 PH/s since early this year, data.