Mining concentration and the Nakamoto coefficient

Foundry USA commands 32% of the global Bitcoin hashrate. As of September 2026, the network difficulty is 127.45 T and the 7-day network hashrate is near 946 EH/s. This concentration places the network in a position where only three mining pools – Foundry USA, AntPool, and F2Pool – exceed the 51% production threshold. These three entities together control over 61% of the network, creating a Nakamoto coefficient of three. Foundry USA, which operates as a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, uses the FPPS payout method and maintains a fully custodial model. While the pool provides 0% fees for qualifying miners, its massive scale means one operator’s block template decisions affect a large fraction of Bitcoin production. The company joined the Stratum V2 Working Group in May 2026. AntPool holds 22.17% of the market share and F2Pool holds 15.11%. Most miners rely on the 3.125 BTC subsidy and transaction fees to cover costs, as fees remain a thin slice of income. Current hashprice sits near $38.96 per PH/s per day. Large-scale miners with 9.5 J/TH efficiency maintain an edge over older machines running at 29.5 J/TH. The current market structure favors large-scale, efficient operators over smaller, decentralized participants.

Dormant wallet movements and liquidity fears

Dormant wallets from the early mining era continue to move despite the current hashrate bear market. On May 31, 2026, an anonymous address starting with 1CDSyXAQxro4FPUoqAQb moved 20 BTC worth $1.47 million at 05:14 UTC in block 951828 after 15.8 years of complete and total dormancy. On September 6, 2026, a different wallet transferred 600 BTC after 16 years of inactivity without confirming movement to an exchange. On a recent Friday, an early miner moved 2,000 BTC worth approximately $181 million at block height 931668 after 15 months of dormancy, consolidating 40 separate mining rewards from 2010 into two Native SegWit addresses. These transactions involve coins from a time when mining rewards were 50 BTC per block and the network was tiny. At the time of the May 2026 transfer, Bitcoin traded around $73,608. The 2,000 BTC movement involved coins with an acquisition cost of approximately $20 per coin. This 20 BTC movement is statistical noise against the $16.3 billion in daily spot volume. An 80,000 BTC whale movement earlier this year sent coins to exchanges without triggering panic, which did not rattle the market. Will these massive liquidations eventually reach centralized exchanges to trigger mass sell pressure? You should monitor these on-chain movements for any sign of coordinated exit, as you already know these old movements signal liquidity shifts.

The divergence of mining pool models

The mining landscape shows a sharp divide between large-scale institutional operators and sovereignty-focused pools. OCEAN uses the TIDES scheme to provide non-custodial payouts and allows miners to select transactions through the DATUM protocol. This architecture allows a user to verify a transaction is true without seeing identifying details. OCEAN’s founder, Luke Dashjr, helped build the pool to counter the custodial, template-centralizing model of mainstream pools. This approach provides a 50% discount on pool fees for users of the DATUM protocol. In contrast, AntPool, which holds 17% of the network hashrate, benefits from its connection to Bitmain, the world’s dominant ASIC manufacturer. This concentration of hardware manufacturing and mining power under single entities creates a structural risk to decentralization. Luxor, a Seattle-based company, is SOC 2 Type 2 certified and focuses on North American operators with fees between 0.7% and 2%. Braiins Pool, which has operated for 14 years, provides Lightning Network payouts with no minimum threshold. Bitcoin leads in infrastructure resilience, with 63% of nodes using Tor and verification costs for a full node at only $289.