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May 4, 2021
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Market Overview |
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Price |
24H |
YTD |
| Bit Digital |
$12.16 |
-3% |
-52% |
| Bitfarms |
$5.71 |
7% |
155% |
| Canaan |
$12.37 |
-7% |
77% |
| Ebang |
$3.58 |
-6% |
-54% |
| Hive |
$4.56 |
-4% |
67% |
| Hut 8 |
$6.40 |
-3% |
115% |
| Marathon |
$33.28 |
-8% |
169% |
| Northern Data |
$98.60 |
-4% |
20% |
| Riot |
$36.72 |
-8% |
95% |
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Data as of 12:00 UTC |
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What miners should know about Bitcoin’s Taproot upgrade. |
Bitcoin miners have begun signaling their opinions on Bitcoin’s pending upgrade, Taproot, with a clock ticking over six difficulty periods for the proposed change to be approved. Called a “speedy trial
,” Bitcoin developers opted to give miners a set period of time to tell the rest of the network whether or not they were ready for the upgrade.
Blocks mined by F2Pool
, SlushPool, Foundry, Antpool
, Poolin signal support from those pools, which collectively represent roughly 55% of Bitcoin’s total hashrate. 90% of the 2016 blocks in a difficulty period need to carry a supportive signal for the upgrade to activate. Blocks mined by several large pools like ViaBTC, Binance Pool, and BTC.com have not signaled support.
In the near-term future, it wouldn’t be a surprise for most or all large pools to signal support for Taproot. Last November, pools representing a majority of the network’s hashrate publicly stated their support for the upgrade. Now the question is if these pools are ready to activate it.
Click here to continue reading this section of Mining Memo. |
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Say goodbye to Ethereum mining as early as October. |
Ethereum miners were put on notice this week following a note from Tim Beiko, a ConsenSys developer and Ethereum community manager, alerting them to the imminent merge from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS).
Beiko told miners to aim to “break even” by the end of 2021 as Ethereum moves from its current consensus mechanism to PoS. Developers are shooting for October 2021 in the Shanghai hard fork, although timelines could change over the coming months.
On a technical level, The Merge will point all of Ethereum’s data – think accounts and balances of smart contracts and user addresses – to the PoS Beacon Chain for settlement just like mining does for PoW coins. By that point the Beacon Chain will have been online for close to one calendar year, but without any real world value.
So, what about the miners?
It remains unlikely a PoW version of Ethereum forks off in any meaningful sense. Why? Because applications and businesses built on Ethereum such as the $80 billion stablecoin market will only recognize one chain as legitimate.
Click here to continue reading this section of Mining Memo.
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Dogecoin mining revenue topped $78 million in April. |
Dogecoin traded above $0.50 for the first time ever today, soaring 8,400% year to date, and its miners are literally on the moon.
Monthly revenue for DOGE miners in April eclipsed $78 million, a 9,200% increase from a year ago. April dogecoin revenue equaled roughly one day of bitcoin mining revenue, which is quite a feat.
From January 2017 to January 2021, average DOGE mining revenue was $1.3 million, according to data from Coin Metrics. February 2020 was the first time DOGE monthly revenue topped $10 million. Transaction fees represented more than 1% of total revenue for the first time in over four years. |
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Where Dogecoin’s hashrate comes from is quite interesting. A handful of Compass clients are among the ranks of miners supporting the Shiba Inu blockchain.
Click here to continue reading this section of Mining Memo. |
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Mining Newsfeed |
🧭 Bitcoin’s difficulty dropped 12.6% even as hashrate recovers.
Following the acute drop in hashrate from April, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty ended the last period with a downward adjustment of 12.6%, the second largest drop since March 2020. Large difficulty drops are uncommon during bull markets, and downward adjustments in general are far outnumbered by increases throughout Bitcoin’s history. But as bitcoin’s price stays in the high $50,000s, miners won’t turn down a marginally easier mining period. |
🧭 Ethereum developers extend the difficulty bomb again.
Ethereum developers moved the “Difficulty bomb
” out of the July London hard fork to Q2 2022. Also called the Ice Age, the bomb makes mining ether progressively more difficult – which increases block times and cuts miner profits – as one more incentive for a swap to Proof-of-Stake (PoS). The bomb’s fuse has been extended three times previously. |
🧭 Foundry is dunking on gold with every block it mines.
Foundry’s mining pool isn’t content to mine digital gold; they want to clearly communicate its superiority to real gold with every block they solve. A “#DropGold” message has appeared in the coinbase message for each block mined by Foundry since late 2020, according to a quick search of a Bitcoin blockchain Twitter bot, which can be verified on Blockchair’s explorer. |
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Proof of Work Overview |
| Bitcoin |
|
|
7D |
YTD |
| Price |
$55,932 |
2% |
93% |
| Difficulty |
20.6T |
-13% |
11% |
| Revenue* |
$0.37 |
4% |
73% |
| Hashrate |
168 EH/s |
10% |
23% |
| Ethereum |
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7D |
YTD |
| Price |
$3,527 |
37% |
383% |
| Difficulty |
7,273T |
1% |
95% |
| Hashrate |
554 TH/s |
2% |
89% |
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* measured by $/TH/s |
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Bitcoin’s Volatility is a Feature Not a Bug with Andy Edstrom, Author of Why Buy Bitcoin |
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Simplifying Crypto Investing with Jesse Proudman of Makara Digital |
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Compass is a modern media and Bitcoin mining company focused on driving the mass adoption of cryptocurrency. Our research analysts and content creators strive to provide actionable and engaging content on the most relevant industry topics.
For more information, to share content ideas, or to discuss mining news, email us at media@compassmining.io. |
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