{"id":17713,"date":"2021-02-08T15:59:36","date_gmt":"2021-02-08T15:59:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci027cfe65800d2697"},"modified":"2025-10-02T15:09:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T20:09:06","slug":"chinese-mining-pool-poolin-acquires-north-american-competitor-novablock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/business\/chinese-mining-pool-poolin-acquires-north-american-competitor-novablock","title":{"rendered":"Chinese Mining Pool Poolin Acquires North American Competitor NovaBlock"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"bsf_rt_marker\"><\/div><figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/btccom-bitcoin-mining-pool-threatened-by-poolin.jpg\" title=\"\"><\/figure>\n<p>China-based mining pool Poolin, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.blockchain.com\/charts\/pools\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">which contributes the second-largest amount of hash rate of any single entity on the Bitcoin network<\/a>, has acquired NovaBlock, a North American pool with offices in St. Jose, California and Calgary, Canada. The takeover will net Poolin an additional 1,681.83 petahashes per second (PH\/s) in mining capacity, per data from <a href=\"https:\/\/btc.com\/stats\/pool\/NovaBlock\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">BTC.com<\/a>, further increasing its hash power dominance.<\/p>\n<p>In a recent <a href=\"https:\/\/support.novablock.com\/hc\/en-us\/articles\/1500002362441-2021-Announcement\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">announcement<\/a>, NovaBlock, which launched in 2019, outlined the planned hash migration, which will take place today. According to <a href=\"https:\/\/btc.com\/stats\/pool\/poolin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">BTC.com<\/a>, Poolin manages a hash rate of 21,909.37 PH\/s, so the addition could bring it up to around 23,591.2 PH\/s. The world\u2019s largest bitcoin mining pool would still be China-based F2Pool, which <a href=\"https:\/\/btc.com\/stats\/pool\/F2Pool\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">has a hash rate<\/a> of 27,918.42 PH\/s.<\/p>\n<p>Poolin is headquartered in Hong Kong and has offices in Beijing, Chengdu and Changsha, China, as well as in Singapore and Berlin.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m guessing Poolin forecasts there will be significant hash rate growth here in North America, and they want to position themselves to have exposure to it,\u201d said Ryan Porter, <a href=\"http:\/\/bitooda.io\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">BitOoda\u2019s<\/a> head of business development, in an interview with <em>Bitcoin Magazine<\/em>. \u201cPrior to the acquisition, NovaBlock controlled 1 percent of the Bitcoin network hash rate. There is now a growing field of competitors entering the North American mining pool space, and a number of global mining pools that are expanding their product offering, so the acquisition puts NovaBlock into an incumbent that could keep them competitive and bring stability.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In its announcement, NovaBlock noted that \u201cPoolin is looking to expand their reach into growing regions like North America.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As the bitcoin mining industry in North America <a href=\"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/articles\/a-hitchhikers-guide-to-bitcoin-mining-in-north-america\">continues to grow<\/a> (the number of North American mining pools has more than doubled in the last year, growing from three to seven), it\u2019s possible that more major pools in China will follow Poolin\u2019s lead and look to acquire mining participants based in the U.S. and Canada.<\/p>\n<p>There is growing recognition that U.S. regulators may be increasingly turning their attention to the mining space and the role of Chinese pools. Ethan Vera, co-founder and CFO of Seattle-based mining pool Luxor, told <em>Bitcoin Magazine<\/em> that miners may be looking for more accountability and stability than Asian pools have to offer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNorth American miners will increasingly want to sell their hash rate to a counterparty that is based in the same legal jurisdiction,\u201d Vera said. \u201cService license agreements, legal recourse, high profitability and good data and stats are top of mind for institutional miners in 2021.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In a <a href=\"https:\/\/bitcointalk.org\/index.php?topic=5315057.new\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">comment<\/a> on Bitcointalk.org, a member called Newbie expressed a preference for working with a pool closer to home:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was going to try NovaBlock out later this year to see what the profit was going to be but now maybe not,\u201d Newbie wrote on February 6, 2021. \u201cI was mainly drawn to the concept of a North American pool with ownership and control centered in North America.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With bitcoin reaching new all-time price highs, interest in mining is only bound to increase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The acquisition of NovaBlock by industry leader Poolin signals growing interest in geographical diversification of bitcoin mining.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2916,"featured_media":17714,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2976,1749,3116,1998],"class_list":{"0":"post-17713","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-mining-decentralization","9":"tag-north-america","10":"tag-novablock","11":"tag-poolin"},"author_data":{"id":2916,"name":"Jessie Willms","nicename":"jessie-willms","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/34e39b2d2b80d0f1b4eaf183ca23eff71d1e903536d749658f27936a80197dee?s=96&d=robohash&r=g"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/btccom-bitcoin-mining-pool-threatened-by-poolin.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2916"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}