This document analyzes the cryptocurrency mining supercomputer market. It finds that the top 6 mined coins generate $42 billion in annual economic value, with Bitcoin and Ethereum each producing around $55 million per day. The top 41 mining pools control over $41 billion in annual revenue across Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin. Globally distributed and pools of unknown location dominate the market. The US has become the largest single host country since China cracked down on mining in 2021.

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November, 2021
Stephen Perrenod
CryptoSuper 500 – Seventh List
Top Cryptocurrency Supercomputers

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©2021 OrionX.net
Digital Money
Store of value
Safe?
Unit of account
Supply?
Medium of exchange
Stable?
Money 3.0 is:
Money in the
Internet
a 500 year advance in
accounting with
triple-entry ledgers on
a timechain
Money 3.0

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✦ 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
– Some might say they are simply digital assets
✦ Most of the current 13,000+ coins will prove to be worthless in
the long run (number still grows), the distribution of market cap
falls off very steeply (power law index -1.57 of the ranking)
✦ Surprise: your Bitcoin is not in your hardware wallet or paper
wallet. That just holds the keys.
OrionX position
Money 3.0

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▪ It’s not either/or with blockchain and bitcoin, it’s both
▪ They are each layers in an integrated stack
▪ Blockchain (or timechain) 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?
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

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Supercomputing for decentralized monetary assets
Cryptocurrency
Mining
✦ How big is the Crypto Mining Supercomputer Market?
✦ Method: We estimate the annual economic value of mined crypto
✦ Bitcoin market cap over $1100 billion (late October, 18.9 million BTC at $61,270)
✦ Bitcoin daily production = $55 million (miners also receive a few $ million in fees)
– money supply inflation under 1.8%, was cut in half in May, 2020
– 24 hours x 6 blocks per hour x 6.25 coins x $61,270
✦ Annual production run rate, Bitcoin, $20 billion
✦ Ethereum #2 by market cap at $500 billion, daily production currently equal to
Bitcoin, roughly $55 million of new ETH per day
✦ Top 41 Mining Pools produce revenue of $41 billion annually across top 3 mined
coins, including new coins and transaction fees. Another several $ billion from
smaller miners and various coins.
✦ Bitcoin mining is not dirty relative to global use of energy, it is estimated 39% of its
electricity is sourced from renewables, well above the world average; also: Bitcoin is
not consumed, it is created permanently in a production of (rising) value process

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CryptoSuper
Methodology
✦ 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, or fiscal debt monetization, backed by reserves
at the Fed.
✦ The mining protocols and hash rates vary in very large degree
between coins
– Total Hashrate for Bitcoin is over 100 Exahash/s and other top coins are mostly in the
Terahash/s domain, considerably less
✦ Most coins (Bitcoin, Ethereum) require ASICs to be profitably mined,
GPU mining still possible with Ethereum for now
✦ 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 and adding transaction fee revenue
✦ We tabulate 41 pools producing over $100 million annual economic
value in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin

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Great Chinese
Mining
Shutdown
✦ Rumors came out in late May about a Chinese crypto mining
shutdown. This time it was serious.
✦ The ban rolled out province by province in the key mining
provinces of Inner Mongolia, XinJiang, and Sichuan. The big
blow came on June 19 with orders in Sichuan.
✦ Hashrate has now recovered to close to prior high, miners in
China sold or relocated their mining rigs, for the most part
✦ The US and Kazakhstan are now leading in hashrate according
to Centre for Alternative Finance, U. Cambridge. US has about
35%, Kazakhstan about 18%, Russia, Canada decent shares.
✦ Why ban mining?
1. limit capital flight
2. control electricity usage
3. better impose regulation and taxes if the ban is relaxed in the future
4. make space for the DC/EP central bank digital Yuan <—- the real
reason

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Top Mined Coins
Top Host Countries
Billion Dollar Pool Operators
Summary Tables

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✦ These 6 coins produce
$42 billion of annual
economic value (AEV)
produced (up from $39
billion in June, 2021)
✦ Bitcoin and Ethereum are
basically tied at about
$55 million value
produced per day
✦ Only ETH, BTC, and
Dogecoin have pools of
over $100 million a year
(41 such pools)
Top Six Coins for
Mining Pools
✦

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✦ We ranked the top 41 pools for
each of the three top coins
(cutoff $100 million per annum)
✦ Pools are in fact usually
multinational since anyone can
contribute (lend for a portion of
rewards) compute power to
many pool
✦ This is a list by host location
ranking for AEV, some are
unknown, many just ‘global’
✦ Global includes US, China,
and/or Europe hosting within
the same pool
✦ CBECI says US IP addresses
now #1 location of miners
within their limited sample
✦ China experienced a large
exodus of hash rate with
government crackdown on
mining farms in June
Top Host
Geographies
(Pools over $100
million annual)
✦
Host Location
Number of
Top Pools
Percent of
AEV
Annualized M$
Global, N/A 13 59.5 24,538
Asia 9 12.7 5,218
N. America 7 11.7 4,815
Europe 3 6.2 2,567
N/A 9 9.9 4,068
Totals 41 100 41,206

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✦ Often the same pool is
mining the three top
coins
✦ We aggregate the coins
mined under the
particular operator
✦ We also list the host
country
✦ These are the Top 10
pools, responsible for 3/4
of the top 3 coins’ annual
economic value creation
✦ US now has 2, Germany
and China 1 each and
the rest are global or
unknown
Billion $
Pool
Operators
✦

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Top 41 pools, Crypto Super List, by Coin

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Top Bitcoin
Mining Pools:
Pool, Monthly and
Annualized
revenue (cutoff
100 M$), Host
country

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Top Ethereum
Mining Pools:
Pool, Monthly
and Annualized
revenue (cutoff
100 M$), Host
country

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Top Dogecoin
Mining Pools:
Pool, Coin
Monthly and
Annualized
revenue (cutoff
100 M$), Host
country

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November, 2021
Stephen Perrenod
OrionX.net/research
Thank you!

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References
✦ Overall: coinmarketcap.com, coinwarz.com, cryptoslate.com
✦ BTC: btc.com, blockchain.com
✦ ETH: btc.com, etherscan.io
✦ BTC, ETH, Doge, others: miningpoolstats.stream
✦ Cryptocurrency topics: orionx.net/blog
✦ Top Cryptocurrency Supercomputers June 2021, (slide presentation link)
✦ Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index https://cbeci.org
✦ The Brutal Efficiency of Crypto Mining, https://medium.com/the-capital/the-brutal-
efficiency-of-crypto-mining-far-beyond-moores-law-92fa90e617e0
✦ Bitcoin’s Long Term Value, An Adoption S-Curve for a New Monetary Technology
https://medium.com/the-capital/bitcoins-long-term-value-e077e212264d