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Bitcoin Halving 2020: How the World's Largest Mining Pool Is Helping Miners 'De-Risk'

F2Pool, the largest bitcoin mining pool in the world, controls 20% of the network's hashrate. F2Pool's Thomas Heller explains the economics of mining.

By Christine Kim
AccessTimeIconMay 2, 2020 at 2:00 p.m. UTC
Updated Dec 11, 2022 at 7:35 p.m. UTC
bitcoin miner

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"There have been days that F2Pool has lost 100 BTC in terms of having to pay miners without mining blocks themselves, but over a long period of time and with a significant amount of network hashrate those ups and downs even out," said Thomas Heller, the mining pool's global business director.

Listen/subscribe to the CoinDesk Podcast feed for unique perspectives and fresh daily insight with Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcasts, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Stitcher, RadioPublica, IHeartRadio or RSS.

This episode is sponsored by ErisX, The Stellar Development Foundation and Grayscale Digital Large Cap Investment Fundhttps://grayscale.co/coindesk.

F2Pool is the largest bitcoin mining pool in the world, controlling 20% of the collective computational energy, also called hashrate, on the Bitcoin network. On the fifth and final episode of Bitcoin Halving 2020: Miner Perspectives, Heller discusses the economic incentives driving cryptocurrency mining and mining pool operations.

See also: Bitcoin Halving: How Miners Are Preparing for Lower Block Rewards

Though miner revenue has decreased sharply over the last two years from around $0.60 per terahash to $0.10, Heller explained that bitcoin mining continues to be profitable due to the release of more efficient hardware and the discovery of cheaper sources of electricity. Positive movement in bitcoin's price is also a major factor, albeit a frustratingly unpredictable one. 

Heller, who operates a slew of his own mining machines, said that without "significant price action" over the next two weeks leading up to Bitcoin's mining reward reduction, also called the halving, both he and other miners would have no choice but to turn off "older machines."

For more information about the halving event, download the free CoinDesk Research explainer report, which features over 30 different charts and additional commentary from bitcoin mining industry experts.

Download CoinDesk's Bitcoin Halving Research Report here.
Download CoinDesk's Bitcoin Halving Research Report here.

Listen/subscribe to the CoinDesk Podcast feed for unique perspectives and fresh daily insight with Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocketcasts, Google Podcasts, Castbox, Stitcher, RadioPublica, IHeartRadio or RSS.

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