Chinese Bitcoin mining pool BytePool is shutting down its operations despite a significant increase in the Hash Rate in recent days.
Reported by local Chinese media on Monday, the decision was taken around the concerns of upcoming halving when the mining rewards will be halved from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC per block.
Lack of profitability and a cash crunch also boosted the decision to leave the mining operation.
Notably, the hash rate of the BytePool dropped from 4000 petahashes per second to merely 200 petahashes per second last month. The pool is reportedly ditching its Bitcoin mining operations to jump into altcoin mining.
Among the top pools
Based in Sichuan, China, Valarhash operates two mining pools BytePool.com and 1THash.top, and also launched a cloud mining platform named 1Tmining and a mining management software - Nelson.
Both the mining pools were among the top ten mining pools. At their peak, they together were responsible for generating 9 percent of the total Bitcoin mining hashrate.
Moreover, the recent fluctuations in the Bitcoin spot market triggered by the coronavirus outbreak also forced many small mining players to close down their operations.
Earlier this year, reports came out of China that authorities were forcibly closing mining farms to contain the spread of the virus.
While the Chinese player is dropping out from the Bitcoin mining race, Binance is getting in - as the exchange giant announced its upcoming crypto mining pool. Details of Binance’s mining pool are yet to be released. However, it can give fierce competition to top players, given Binance’s reputation in the industry.
Meanwhile, just yesterday, Argo Blockchain posted record numbers of its Bitcoin mining operation for the first quarter of this year, defying the impact of COVID-19 on the industry.
