Which Countries Mine the most Bitcoins?

Bitcoin mining tends to gravitate towards countries with cheap electricity. As Bitcoin mining is somewhat centralized, 10-15 mining companies have claimed the vast majority of network hash power. With many of these companies in the same country, only a number of countries mine and export a significant amount of bitcoins.

China

China mines the most bitcoins and therefore ends up “exporting” the most bitcoins. Electricity in China is very cheap and has allowed Chinese Bitcoin miners to gain a very large percentage of Bitcoin’s hash power. It’s rumored that some Chinese power companies point their excess energy towards Bitcoin mining facilities so that no energy goes to waste.
China is home to many of the top Bitcoin mining companies: F2Pool, AntPool, BTCC, and BW. It’s estimated that these mining pools own somewhere around 60% of Bitcoins hash power, meaning they mine about 60% of all new bitcoins.

Georgia

Georgia is home to BitFury, one of the largest producers of Bitcoin mining hardware and chips. BitFury currently mines about 15% of all bitcoins.

Sweden

Sweden is home to KnCMiner, a Bitcoin mining company based in Stockholm. KnCMiner currently mines about 7.5% of all bitcoins.

US

The US is home to 21 Inc., a Bitcoin mining company based in California. 21 runs a large amount of miners, but also sells low powered bitcoin miners as part of their 21 Bitcoin computer. Most of the hash power from the 21 Bitcoin computers is pointed towards 21’s mining pool. 21 Inc. mines about 3% of all bitcoins.
The countries above mine about 80% of all bitcoins. The rest of the hash power is spread across the rest of the world, often pointed at smaller mining pools like Slush (Czech Republic) and Eligius (US).

The Biggest Mining Pools

1. DiscusFish/F2Pool

DiscusFish, also known as F2Pool, is based in China. DiscusFish has mined about 19.5% of all blocks over the past six months.

2. AntPool

Antpool is another Chinese based mining pool, maintained by BitMain. Antpool mines about 18.5% of all blocks.

3. BitFury Pool

BitFury is one of the largest producers of Bitcoin mining hardware and chips. BitFury currently mines about 13% of all bitcoins in three data centers across Georgia. It is a private mining pool and can’t be joined by hobby miners. BitFury is the world’s biggest bitcoin miner.

4. BTCC

BTCC is China’s third largest Bitcoin exchange. Its mining pool currently mines about 11.5% of all blocks.

5. BW Pool

BW, established in 2014, is another mining company based in China. It currently mines about 8% of all blocks.

6. KnCMiner

Sweden is home to KnCMiner, a Bitcoin mining manufacturer based in Stockholm. KnCMiner currently mines about 6% of all blocks. KnCMiner is not a pool and mines bitcoins in their own warehouses.

7. Slush

Slush was the first mining pool and currently mines about 5% of all blocks.

8. 21 Inc.

21 Inc. is a Bitcoin mining company based in California. 21 runs a large amount of miners, but also sells low powered bitcoin miners as part of their 21 Bitcoin computer. Most of the hash power from the 21 Bitcoin computers is pointed towards 21’s mining pool. 21 Inc. mines about 4% of all bitcoins.

9. Eligius

Eligius was one of the first mining pools created. It currently mines about 3% of all blocks.

10. GHASH.IO

GHASH.IO used to be the largest mining pool, with over 50% of the network. However, concerns over a 51% attack caused many miners to transfer their hash power to other pools.

Get a Bitcoin Wallet and Mining Software

What is Bitcoin Mining Software?

Now that you already know about the best Bitcoin mining hardware, we’re going to talk about Bitcoin mining software. Bitcoin mining hardware handles the actual Bitcoin mining process, but Bitcoin mining software is equally as important. If you are a solo miner then mining software connects your Bitcoin miner to the blockchain. If you mine with a pool then the software will connect you to your mining pool.

mportance of Bitcoin Mining Software

The main job of the software is to deliver the mining hardware’s work to the rest of the Bitcoin network and to receive the completed work from other miners on the network.
Bitcoin mining software monitors this input and output of your miner while also displaying statistics such as the speed of your miner, hashrate, fan speed and the temperature.

Bitcoin Wallets

One of the most important things you will need before using any kind of Bitcoin mining software is a wallet. This is because all Bitcoin mining software will ask you for a Bitcoin address that will be used to send your mining rewards and payouts. Once you create or download a wallet you will be able to get a Bitcoin address from your wallet.
There are many Bitcoin wallets, but these are the ones we recommend if you are just starting out:

• Electrum - Simple Bitcoin wallet that works on Mac, Windows, and Linux.
• Mycelium - The most popular Bitcoin wallet on Android.
• breadwallet - The most popular Bitcoin wallet for iOS.

If you expect to earn a lot of money through mining then it would be smart to purchase a more secure wallet: a hardware wallet. If you are just getting into it the Ledger Nano S costs about $60 and will keep your coins super secure.
Now that we understand mining software and how it helps in the mining process, and you got your Bitcoin wallet and address, let’s look at different software on different operating systems.

Bitcoin Mining Software for Windows

Bitcoin Miner

You can use Bitcoin Miner on Windows 10 and Windows 8.1. It has an easy to use interface, power saving mode, mining pool support and fast share submission. One useful feature is the profit reports feature because this feature will help you know if your mining is profitable or not. The latest version of this software is Bitcoin Miner 1.27.0.

BTCMiner

BTCMiner is an Open Source Bitcoin Miner for ZTEX USB-FPGA modules 1.5. BTCMiner comes with the following features: dynamic frequency scaling in that BTCMiner automatically chooses the frequency with the highest rate of valid hashes, ready-to-use Bitstream i.e. no Xilinx software or license required. It also comes with supported FPGA boards which contain a USB interface used for communication and programming.

CGMiner

CGMiner is arguably the most famous and the most common software among Bitcoin miners at the moment. CGMiner is based on the original code of CPU Miner. This software has many features but the main ones include: fan speed control, remote interface capabilities, self-detection of new blocks with a mini database, multi GPU support and CPU mining support.

BFGMiner

BFGMiner is more or less the same as CGMiner. The only major difference is that it doesn’t focus on GPUs like CGMiner but instead it is designed specifically for ASICs. Some unique features of BFGMiner include: mining with free mesa/LLVM OpenCL, ADL device reordering by PCI bus ID, integrated overclocking and fan control.

EasyMiner

EasyMiner is a GUI based software and it acts as a convenient wrapper for CGMiner and BFGMiner software. This software supports the getwork mining protocol as well as stratum mining protocol. It can also be used for both solo and pooled mining. Among its main features is that it configures your miner and provides performance graphs for easy visualization of your mining activity.

Bitcoin Mining Software for Linux

CGMiner

CGMiner is arguably the most famous and the most common software among Bitcoin miners at the moment. CGMiner is based on the original code of CPU Miner. This software has many features but the main ones include: fan speed control, remote interface capabilities, self-detection of new blocks with a mini database, multi GPU support and CPU mining support.

BFGMiner

BFGMiner is more or less the same as CGMiner. The only major difference is that it doesn’t focus on GPUs like CGMiner but instead it is designed specifically for ASICs. Some unique features of BFGMiner include: mining with free mesa/LLVM OpenCL, ADL device reordering by PCI bus ID, integrated overclocking and fan control.

EasyMiner

EasyMiner is a GUI based software and it acts as a convenient wrapper for CGMiner and BFGMiner software. This software supports the getwork mining protocol as well as stratum mining protocol. It can also be used for both solo and pooled mining. Among its main features is that it configures your miner and provides performance graphs for easy visualization of your mining activity.

Bitcoin Mining Software for Mac OS X

RPC Miner

RPC Miner can be used on Mac OS 10.6 or higher and features integration with Mac OS APIs and systems.

More Software

All of the mining software above listed for Linux and Windows also works for Mac OS X. Scroll up to learn more!

Cash Out your Coins

Once you have setup your software and are mining, you may need to cash out some of your coins in order to pay off your expenses such as electricity. For this you can use Buy Bitcoin Worldwide to find a Bitcoin exchange in your country.

Why are Miners Important?

Bitcoin miners are crucial to Bitcoin and its security. Without miners, Bitcoin would be vulnerable and easy to attack. Most Bitcoin users don’t mine. However, miners are responsible for the creation of all new bitcoins and a fascinating part of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

What is a Mining Pool?

Mining, once done on the average home computer, is now mostly done in large, specialized warehouses. These warehouses usually direct their hashing power towards mining pools. What is a mining pool? Here’s the definition from Buy Bitcoin Worldwide:
Mining pools are groups of cooperating miners who agree to share block rewards in proportion to their contributed mining hashing 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.
While we can see which mining pools are the largest, it’s important to understand that the hash power pointed towards a mining pool isn’t necessarily owned by the mining pool itself. There are a few cases, like with BitFury and KnCMiner, where the company itself runs the mining operation but doesn’t run a mining pool.
Bitcoin miners can switch mining pools easily by routing their hash power to a different pool. The market share of pools is constantly changing. To make the list of top 10 miners, we looked at blocks found over the past 6 months using data from BlockTrail. The size of mining pools is constantly changing. We will do our best to keep this posted up-to-date. Note that if you cloud mine then you don’t need to select a pool; the cloud mining company does this

Biggest & Best Bitcoin Mining Pools and Companies

Now that you have your Bitcoin mining hardware, your next step is to join the best Bitcoin mining pool.

Bitcoin Mining Hardware ASICs and Rigs

Hobby Bitcoin mining can still be fun and even profitable if you have cheap electricity, an efficient bitcoin mining machine, and get the best Bitcoin mining hardware.
It’s important to remember, however, that Bitcoin mining is competitive and today it is not a good idea for the average person to mine. If you want bitcoins then you are better off buying bitcoins.