U.S. passes China as world’s largest mining hub for bitcoin, report finds

GLOBALLY, THE PROCESS DEVOURS MORE ELECTRICITY THAN THE NETHERLANDS DOES IN A GIVEN YEAR, ACCORDING TO THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.

The United States has overtaken China to lead the world with the largest share in global bitcoinmining networks, according to University of Cambridge data published on Wednesday.

The U.S. lead follows China’s crackdown on bitcoin mining in recent months, which sent the worldwide price of bitcoin plummeting. China issued a nationwide blanket ban on crypto mining last month in a move that has devastated the industry there and pushed many miners overseas.

“The latest data inBitcoin forming our interactive mining map follows the trajectory that we had seen developing over the last two data updates. Clearly, the government-mandated crackdown in China has had a significant impact on the new order of global hashrate share,” Michel Rauchs, digital-assets lead at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, told The Washington Post by email on Thursday.

“It will be interesting to see if the existing trends continue or if shares change as the hashrate settles geographically,” he added. The hashrate is a measure of collective computational power, and therefore of mining performance.

is one of thousands of types of hard-tovisualize cryptocurrency. In its simplest form, a cryptocurrency is a computer code generated by publicly available software that allows people to store and send value online. The code verifies and groups transactions onto a public record known as a blockchain, a large file containing every transaction ever made.

The value of a cryptocurrency is usually expressed in dollars and is set by public trading conducted by exchange houses. It can vary wildly; the cost of a single bitcoin equates to roughly $50,000 today, down from nearly $60,000 in

May.

Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, dogecoin and ethereum are akin to digital gold, and the algorithm that generates a cryptocurrency is available for download on developer websites and, in theory, available for anyone to use to create new cryptocurrency. But the process is highly competitive because the actual amount of cryptocurrency to be put in circulation is limited. These limits vary depending on the cryptocurrency and are set by whoever created the code. For instance, the bitcoin algorithm limits the number of bitcoin that can be generated to 21 million. At that point, no more will be made.

The energy-intensive computing process needed to create new currency requires enormous computer power to solve the complex mathematical equations that generate a unit of cryptocurrency. Globally, the process devours more electricity than the Netherlands does in a given year, according to the University of Cambridge.