The document analyzes the cryptocurrency mining supercomputer market. It estimates the top 50 mining pools generate $7.9 billion annually across the top 6 mined coins, with Bitcoin accounting for 62% and Ethereum 33%. China hosts 19 of the top 50 pools and accounts for 39.6% of annual economic value. The largest pool operator is F2Pool, a global pool responsible for 1058 million annually. Bitcoin's hashrate has grown exponentially from 0.2 terahashes to over 100 exahashes in the past decade, representing a 163% compound annual growth rate.

1. @OrionX_net
November 13, 2020
Stephen Perrenod, Ph.D.
CryptoSuper 500
Top 50 Cryptocurrency Supercomputers

2. @OrionX_net
Digital Money
Store of value
Safe?
Unit of account
Supply?
Medium of
exchange
Stable?
What is it?
Money in the
Internet
500 year advance in
accounting
(triple-entry ledger)
©2020 OrionX.net

3. @OrionX_net
ª Cryptocurrencies (at least Bitcoin) represent Money 3.0
– 0.x – shells, beads
– 1.0 – gold and silver coins
– 2.0 – national fiat currencies
– 3.0 – Decentralized digital Money stored in the Internet
– Others might say they are simply digital assets
ª Most of the current 7500+ coins will prove to be worthless in
the long run
ª Surprise: your Bitcoin is not in your hardware wallet or paper
wallet. That just holds the keys.
OrionX position
Money 3.0
©2020 OrionX.net

4. @OrionX_net
§ It’s not either/or, it’s both
§ They are each layers in a stack
§ Blockchain is the triple entry ledger of chained
transaction blocks: sender wallet, blockchain, receiver
wallet
§ A consensus algorithm (e.g. Nakamoto) that enforces
security and prevents double spending is required:
Mining, it also enforces a monetary policy
§ An incentive is required to cause the algorithm to be
computed and transactions added to the chain:
Cryptocurrency/Coin
§ Smart contracts and second layer chains extend the
functionality
Blockchain or Bitcoin? Gold, Fiat or Bitcoin?
©2020 OrionX.net
Aristotle defined the first four attributes required for money over two millennia
ago. We have added Fungibility “one is as good as another” to the table.
Bitcoin is private, global money on a decentralized, highly replicated leger.
Monetary Technology Advances

5. @OrionX_net
Supercomputing for decentralized Money
Cryptocurrency
Mining
ª How big is the Crypto Mining Supercomputer Market?
ª Method: We estimate the annual economic value of mined crypto
ª Bitcoin market cap about $300 billion (November 12, 2020; 18.5 million BTC at
nearly $16,000)
ª Bitcoin daily production = $14.4 million
– money supply inflation ~ 1.8% was cut in half in May, 2020
– 24 hours x 6 blocks per hour x 6.25 coins x $16,000
ª Annual production run rate, Bitcoin, $5.3 billion
ª Top 50 Mining Pools produce $7.9 billion annually across top 6 mined coins
ª Bitcoin is some 2/3 of the market cap of some 7500 coins, it similarly dominates
the Mined (Proof of Work) coin category by produced value
ª Ethereum #2 daily prod’n13,292 coins x $460 = $6.1 million, $2.2 billion per
annum
©2020 OrionX.net

6. @OrionX_net
CryptoSuper
Methodology
ª We only consider Proof of Work mined coins, since they are the only
ones using significant supercomputing power
– Non-mined coins usually use Proof of Stake, Pre-mining (“air drop”), or other
Byzantine Fault Tolerant algorithm. They either have to start with mining or air
drop.
– The US $ started out as Proof of Work (mining, minting) then switched to Proof
of Stake (paper certificates against gold, silver) and now is an “air drop” of sorts,
created by banks when new loans are made, backed by reserves at the Fed.
ª The mining protocols and hash rates vary in very large degree
between coins
– e.g. Total Hashrate for Bitcoin is over 100 Exahash/s and for ZCash only 6
Gigahash/s (10 orders of magnitude lower)
ª Most coins (Bitcoin, Ethereum) require ASICs to be profitably mined
ª We compare mining pools by using the economic value of coins
produced per day = number of blocks mined x number of coins per
block x price per coin
©2020 OrionX.net

7. @OrionX_net
Top SHA-256 Mining Rigs, Top Coins
Hashrate Evolution, Bitcoin
Top Host Countries
Top Pool Operators
Summary Tables

8. @OrionX_net
ª Top 10 Crypto mining rigs for SHA-
256 (Bitcoin’s) PoW algorithm
ª Terahash/sec rating is how fast they
generate solution guesses to crypto
puzzle, of order 100 TH/s
ª It would take 1,000,000 of top-rated
Antminer S19 Pro ASIC=based rigs
to produce the aggregate hash
power from all Bitcoin mining
ª Four brands in top 10, all Chinese
ª Antminer from Bitmain #1, followed
by Whatsminer systems
ª Gross margin estimates provided for
5 cent and 1 cent power (per kW-
hour). Generally 3 cent is the
cheapest power, but yes 1 cent
power possible: flared natural gas
access and load leveling shut-in
kickbacks during electric demand
peaks make this possible.
ª Only electricity costs subtracted for
gross margin in table, there are other
operating costs and the capex for the
rigs which are priced in $2K to $3K
range and have < 24 month
economic lives.
Top Bitcoin
Mining Rigs
(SHA-256)
©2020 OrionX.net
ª
Mining Rig TH/s Watts
TH/s per
kW
Gross
Margin
$/day (5
cent
power)
Gross
Margin
$/day (1
cent
power)
Antminer
S19 Pro
110 3250 33.8 7.50 11.79
Whatsminer
M30S++
112 3250 34.5 7.44 11.96
Whatsminer
M30S+
100 3472 28.8 6.29 10.61
Antminer
S19
95
3400 27.9 5.95 10.07
Whatsminer
M30S
86 3250 26.5 4.99 9.04
Antminer
T19
84 3150 26.7 4.93 8.84
AvalonMiner
1166 Pro
81 3400 23.8 4.32 8.44
Antminer
S17+
73 2920 25.0 4.06 7.64
Whatsminer
M31S
70 3220 21.7 3.39 7.23
Antminer
S17e
64 2880 22.2 3.18 6.62

9. @OrionX_net
ª Bitcoin’s hashrate has
grown from 0.2
Terahashes when it was 2
years old to over 100
Exahashes
ª Over 8 orders of magnitude
ª A BlockYear is 52,500
blocks each of about 10
minutes, and is
approximately equal to a
calendar year
ª The Hashrate has grown
as a power law of slope 10
during the past 4 years
(Hashrate regressed
against # Block years or
blockchain length)
ª This amounts to 163%
compound annual growth
ª Far beyond Moore’s Law, it
is Doubling each 9 months
Hashrate
Growth for
Bitcoin:
Tremendous
ª
Block
Height
Block
reward
Block
Years
elapsed
Date
Hashrate
(TeraH/s)
log 10 of
Hashrate
log 10 of
Block
Year
Power
law, 4-
year
interval
315,000 25 6 2014-08-11 156,187 5.19 0.78 14.83
341,250 25 6.5 2015-01-31 296,921 5.47 0.81 18.49
367,500 25 7 2015-07-29 386,597 5.59 0.85 19.37
393,750 25 7.5 2016-01-17 766,473 5.88 0.88 17.49
420,000 12.5 8 2016-07-09 1,554,081 6.19 0.90 13.15
446,250 12.5 8.5 2017-01-02 2,420,682 6.38 0.93 9.35
472,500 12.5 9 2017-06-23 5,145,068 6.71 0.95 8.46
498,750 12.5 9.5 2017-12-11 12,845,067 7.11 0.98 9.90
525,000 12.5 10 2018-05-29 33,710,000 7.53 1.00 12.10
551,250 12.5 10.5 2018-11-24 41,483,900 7.62 1.02 12.59
577,500 12.5 11 2019-05-24 52,657,000 7.72 1.04 12.26
603,750 12.5 11.5 2019-11-14 89,789,000 7.95 1.06 11.92
630,000 6.25 12 2020-05-11
121,040,00
0
8.08 1.08 11.19
654,875 6.25 12.47 2020-10-27
114,815,50
0
8.06 1.096 10.26
Last 4
years
HR ratio 47.73 R^2 0.94 slope 10.26
CAGR 163%

10. @OrionX_net
ª These are the top 6
coins mined with
Proof of Work, by
market cap
ª Only mined coins use
supercomputer class
computational power
ª All Snapshots on
hashing rates, block
production, were
taken as of 10/31/20
ª Hash rates for
Bitcoin, Ethereum:
we used average
monthly totals, for
others the recent
weekly hash rate
ª Note the extreme
variation in Hashing
rates with Bitcoin ~
100 Exa and Zcash
at under 10 Giga
Top Six Mined
Coins (10/31/20
snapshot)
©2020 OrionX.net
ª
Coin HW Algorithm Block time
Block
subsidy
New coins /
day
Hash
rate
units
Bitcoin ASIC SHA256 10 min. 6.25 900 114.5 Exa
Ethereum ASIC Ethash 13 sec. 2 13292 190.7 Tera
Bitcoin
Cash
ASIC SHA256 10 min. 6.25 900 2.63 Exa
LTC ASIC Scrypt 2.5 min. 12.5 7200 259.0 Tera
Bitcoin SV ASIC SHA256 10 min. 6.25 900 1.80 Exa
Zcash ASIC Equihash 1.25 min. 6.25 5760 6.49 Giga

11. @OrionX_net
ª These eight coins
had mining pools in
the top 50
ª $9.1 billion of annual
economic value
produced (up from
$7.4 billion in
November, 2019)
ª 62% of all AEV
(annual economic
value) for mined
coins is in Bitcoin
ª 33% is in Ethereum,
and the remaining
5% spread across
four others
Top Six Coins
for Mining
Pools
©2020 OrionX.net
ª
Coin
Top 50
Pools:
M$ per
year
M$ per year for All
Production
Percent of
Annual
Economic
Value
Bitcoin 4784 5621 61.8
Ethereum 2833 3031 33.3
Litecoin 114 160 1.8
Zcash 116 151 1.7
Bitcoin Cash 40 83 0.9
Bitcoin SV 19 52 0.6
Total 7906 9098 100

12. @OrionX_net
ª We ranked the top 50
pools for each of the six
top coins
ª Pools are in fact
multinational since
anyone can contribute
compute power to any
pool
ª This is a list by host
country ranking for AEV,
some are Mixed
ª Global includes US,
China, and Europe within
the same pool
ª We then interleaved the
list to get the top pools by
$ value of production
ª China has 40% of the Top
50 pool AEV, Global 34%,
Hong Kong, US each 9%
Top Host
Countries
©2020 OrionX.net
ª
Host Country
Number of
Top Pools
Percent of
AEV
Annualized
M$
China 19 39.6 3139
Global 13 34.0 2683
Hong Kong 4 9.1 715
US 2 9.3 721
Europe 2 1.9 152
Other, N/A 10 6.0 498
Totals 50 100 7908

13. @OrionX_net
ª Often the same pool
is mining multiple
coins
ª We aggregate the
coins mined under a
particular operator
ª We also list the host
country
ª These are the Top 10,
responsible for ~ 81%
of the Top 50 annual
economic value
creation
ª China has 5, US 1,
Hong Kong 1, others
global or mixed
Top Pool
Operators
©2020 OrionX.net
ª
Pool Operator Host Country
Number of
Top Pools
Annualized M$
F2Pool Global 4 1058
SparkPool China 1 840
Poolin US, China 3 736
BTCdotcom Global 2 683
Ethermine US 1 654
AntPool China 3 514
HuobiPool China 1 484
ViaBTC Hong Kong 4 374
BinancePool China 1 333
58Coin&1THash
China 1 298
Totals 21 5974

14. @OrionX_net
Top 50 Crypto Super List, by Coin

15. @OrionX_net
Top Bitcoin
Mining Pools:
Pool, Monthly
and
Annualized
revenue (M$),
Host country
©2020 OrionX.net

16. @OrionX_net
Top Ethereum
Mining Pools:
Pool, Monthly
and
Annualized
revenue (M$),
Host country
©2020 OrionX.net

17. @OrionX_net
Top Litecoin
Mining Pools:
Pool, Coin
Monthly and
Annualized
revenue (M$),
Host country
©2020 OrionX.net

18. @OrionX_net
Top Zcash,
Bitcoin Cash,
Bitcoin SV,
Mining Pools:
Pool, Coin
Monthly and
Annualized
revenue (M$),
Host country
©2020 OrionX.net

19. @OrionX_net
November 13, 2020
Stephen Perrenod
OrionX.net/blog
Thank you!

20. @OrionX_net
References
ª Overall: coinmarketcap.com, coinwarz.com, cryptoslate.com
ª BTC: btc.com, blockchain.com
ª ETH: btc.com, etherscan.io
ª BCH: btc.com, cash.coin.dance
ª Others: miningpoolstats.stream
ª Cryptocurrency topics: orionx.net/blog
ª Top Cryptocurrency Supercomputers June 2020, (slide presentation link)
ª The Brutal Efficiency of Crypto Mining, https://medium.com/the-capital/the-brutal-
efficiency-of-crypto-mining-far-beyond-moores-law-92fa90e617e0
ª Article comparing future supply model and stock-to-flow model for Bitcoin market
cap and price projections https://medium.com/the-capital/the-future-supply-model-
era-4-ca3e9591d871