Which country has the highest percentage of miners?

[pilscoop]

Can this affect the network in any way?

[VirosaGITS]

Can this affect the network in any way?

China. Well it give more power to the Chinese. It cause centralization of the hashrate. If they get even more hash% they could easily mount a 51% attack. Which can succeed with lower chance with less than 51% however. But for now we're good.

You can get a good idea by looking at this graph;
https://blockchain.info/pools

[achow101]

Can this affect the network in any way?

Most of the hashrate is in china. If china were to someone block the miners from connecting to the network, that could be disastrous since we would be losing over half of the hashrate

[ranochigo]

It is hard to say. There isn't a full logs of the country which miners are located in. The pools are merely based in China and people may be mining from other countries. KNCMiner also have a big farm in Sweden. From what I see, it is China having the most numbers of publicly revealed mining farms.

Can this affect the network in any way?

Most of the hashrate is in china. If china were to someone block the miners from connecting to the network, that could be disastrous since we would be losing over half of the hashrate

They could possibly route the pool via tor and it would be harder to block. To be honest, most miners have setup at least one backup pools and a portion of the miners aren't based in China. Possibility of losing the hashrate is still there however.

[VirosaGITS]

It is hard to say. There isn't a full logs of the country which miners are located in. The pools are merely based in China and people may be mining from other countries. KNCMiner also have a big farm in Sweden. From what I see, it is China having the most numbers of publicly revealed mining farms.

Can this affect the network in any way?

Most of the hashrate is in china. If china were to someone block the miners from connecting to the network, that could be disastrous since we would be losing over half of the hashrate

They could possibly route the pool via tor and it would be harder to block. To be honest, most miners have setup at least one backup pools and a portion of the miners aren't based in China. Possibility of losing the hashrate is still there however.

I guess but even though China's pool may not be 100% China, it doesnt mean all China's miner point at a officially Chinese pool. Regardless, China probably have a similar amount of hashrate than all the northern countries combined.

And it doesn't make sense for Chinese's pool, nodes and network to try to cut off. They'd have to basically turn everything they have into an alt-internet and then... then could not do anything outside of it with their BTC. They would have the total network... on basically a home lan, not connected to the world = useless BTC.

I very much the pools and miners will all decide to collectively self destruct their BTC portion.

[randy8777]

it's difficult to say, but if you consider how much power the chinese mining farms have, then i would say china. they enjoy cheap power to feed their gigantic mining farms.

[saturn643]

Chinese are most of them, to trade. in china there is not a lot of things you can do so far with bitcoin

[afriezalie]

It must be China. There are so many bitcoin farms there, also you can find mining companies' base there because electricity cost and maintanance cost are low there.

I think this situation will not affect the network. Most of BTC farms are in China, but the owners aren't in China, so it won't affect the network. 51% attack is only happened when the hashrate are own by China companies.

[Possum577]

Can this affect the network in any way?

Highest percentage of what? Percentage of actual people mining or percentage of the mining effort?

My guess is also China. It's a very cheap place to conduct large mining operations and is relatively unregulated. You should ask this question over in the mining board of this forum.

[btcdealer]

In my opinion china is the largest country in the percentage of miners because of the availability of the resources like the most important one that is electricity. There is a city in china where the cost of electricity is very low hence there is a very largest mining facility for bitcoin.

[Amph]

china is holding 60%* more, last time i've checked, and i'm fairly sure that this isn't good at all, some problems may arise with this situation in the future

if for some reason the mining will not be profitable, they will be forced to leave or attack the network, as a last chance to take profit

where other miners will simply leave

[avatar_kiyoshi]

Look at this pool stats: https://blockchain.info/pools
the biggest pool is https://www.f2pool.com
china is dominate of bitcoin miners, maybe because they have free electric bills.

[bit3000]

I don't know which country.But my neighbors doesn't lemme sleep.They keep there miners on 24/7 LOL

[Winalunt]

where else could it be other than satoshi's breed loll.
the big 4 are of CHINA ....contributing the majority.

[Betwrong]

Can this affect the network in any way?

Most of the hashrate is in china. If china were to someone block the miners from connecting to the network, that could be disastrous since we would be losing over half of the hashrate

Doesn't that seem strange? Shouldn't a Communist state like China make the BTC illegal in the first place? The good news is they are approaching to the Capitalism more and more and before this government makes the BTC illegal most likely it will be replaced by a more liberal one.

[medUSA]

And it doesn't make sense for Chinese's pool, nodes and network to try to cut off.
<snip>
not connected to the world = useless BTC.

Pool owners and miners don't want that, but the great firewall of China might do that. They have no strong reason to block bitcoin mining now, but the Government can do that if they wanted to.

Although largest pools are Chinese, I believe (hope) a large portion of the hashing power is from outside china. Global miners are sending hashes to them because they are large pools. Large mining farms are best located in locations with cheap electricity. According to the wiki (here), there are many countries with similar low electricity costs.

[Mickeyb]

Wherever there is a cheap electricity. China is not the only country with cheap electricity in this world. Although China holds a lot of miners and a lot of hashing power, this can't be denied.

There have been some farms surfacing in Iceland lately. I guess that they use their thermal waters for electricity production and also there is no much need for cooling up there since it's very cold anyways.

[givemefive]

Can this affect the network in any way?

China.

[iram66680]

And it doesn't make sense for Chinese's pool, nodes and network to try to cut off.
<snip>
not connected to the world = useless BTC.

Pool owners and miners don't want that, but the great firewall of China might do that. They have no strong reason to block bitcoin mining now, but the Government can do that if they wanted to.

Although largest pools are Chinese, I believe (hope) a large portion of the hashing power is from outside china. Global miners are sending hashes to them because they are large pools. Large mining farms are best located in locations with cheap electricity. According to the wiki (here), there are many countries with similar low electricity costs.

land costs and weather conditions may make china a more viable place. there are ample amount of land in china for people to build warehouses cheaply and most asic manufacturers are located there. there are certain parts of china with cooler weather conditions, less cooling is required.

[maokoto]

There have been some farms surfacing in Iceland lately. I guess that they use their thermal waters for electricity production and also there is no much need for cooling up there since it's very cold anyways.

Yes. Having computers working on cold weather saves a lot.