Largest Bitcoin Mining Pools Gutted as Bitmain Reels

The two largest Bitcoin mining pools, BTC.com and Antpool, have lost a large chunk of their hash power over the crypto winter.

The two Bitmain owned pools signaled the mining market's implosion, culminating in Bitmain laying off 50 percent of its workforce.

At the beginning of 2018, Bitmain's mining pools BTC.com and Antpool were the go-to destinations for miners.

If Bitmain's November hash rate disclosures are accurate, the giant controlled a total of 4.5 percent of all Bitcoin mining.

The aftermarket price of graphics cards, a common piece of mining equipment, reflected this dynamic: one Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080, a high-end piece of GPU mining equipment, was selling in stores for $549 but was trading at over $1,000 on the open market.

Most electronics stores were picked dry of equipment, and mining hardware in the entire industry was selling at a steep premium.

Mining pools are collections of miners-in exchange for a small fee, these miners can reduce the volatility of bitcoin payouts.

Usually, for an average miner, it will take a year or more to solve the Bitcoin algorithm and reap the jackpot of 12.5 BTC. Instead, these miners group together to earn BTC rewards consistently.

Bitmain's two mining pools, BTC.com and Antpool, have shrunk to just 30 percent of the overall market; a 27 percent relative decline since the beginning of the year.

These changes are reflected in the dominance of Bitmain's mining pools.