2 Attachment(s)
10 Best & Biggest Bitcoin Mining Pools 2019
What is a Mining Pool?
Mining pools are groups of cooperating miners who agree to share block rewards in proportion to their contributed mining hash power.
While mining pools are desirable to the average miner as they smooth out rewards and make them more predictable, they unfortunately concentrate power to the mining pool’s owner.
Miners can, however, choose to redirect their hashing power to a different mining pool at anytime.
Pool Concentration in China
Before we get into the best mining pools to join, it’s important to note that most mining pools are in China. Many only have Chinese websites and support. Mining centralization in China is one of Bitcoin’s biggest issues at the moment.
There are about 20 major mining pools. Broken down by the percent of hash power controlled by a pool, and the location of that pool’s company, we estimate that Chinese pools control ~81% of the network hash rate:
The Biggest Mining Pools
The list below details the biggest Bitcoin mining pools. This is based on info from Blockchain’s pool share chart:
We strongly recommend new miners to join Slush Pool despite it not being one of the biggest pools. It was the first Bitcoin mining pool and remains one of the most reliable and trusted pools, especially for beginners.
We strongly recommend new miners to join Slush Pool despite it not being one of the biggest pools. It was the first Bitcoin mining pool and remains one of the most reliable and trusted pools, especially for beginners.
1. BTC.com
BTC.com is a public mining pool that can be joined and mines 15% of all block. We strongly recommend joining Slush Pool instead.
2. Antpool
Antpool is a mining pool based in China and owned by BitMain. Antpool mines about 11% of all blocks.
3. Slush
Slush was the first mining pool and currently mines about 11% of all blocks.
Slush is probably one of the best and most popular mining pools despite not being one of the largest.
4. F2pool
F2Pool is based in China. It has mined about 10% of all blocks over the past six months.
5. ViaBTC
ViaBTC is a somewhat new mining pool that has been around for about one year. It’s targeted towards Chinese miners and mines about 9% of all blocks.
6. BTC.top
BTC.top is a private pool and cannot be joined. It mines about 7% of all blocks.
7. DPOOL
DPOOL is a Chinese pool and mines about 4% of all blocks.
8. Bitclub.Network
Bitclub Network is a large mining pool but appears to be somewhat shady. We recommend staying away from this pool.
9. Bitfury
Bitfury is a private pool that cannot be joined. Bitfury currently mines about 3.5% of all blocks.
10. 58COIN
58COIN is a Chinese Bitcoin mining pool.
