By some metrics, Antpool has over 50% of Bitcoin’s hashrate through proxy pools. Is this a threat to Bitcoin?

Industry expert Ian Descôteaux from Pow.Re discusses evidence of pool consolidation, risks to Bitcoin, and potential solutions for decentralization. This podcast explores the growing centralization of Bitcoin mining pools, focusing on proxy pools and their potential impact on the network.

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

02:48 Checksum's bio

03:34 Canada & South America hash rate

06:42 Mining pool centralization

09:14 Proxy pools

11:57 Proxy pool diagram

13:57 F2Pool use proxy?

15:14 F2Pool block template

16:09 Cobo yield & risk

19:31 Merkle tree evidence

25:28 UTXO accelerator

29:59 Selfish mining & 51%

33:35 Covenants

36:26 Antpool incentives

38:38 Block withholding attacks

40:17 How to fix?

43:32 Are new pools likely?

45:52 Final thoughts

Published twice weekly, "The Mining Pod" interviews the best builders and operators in the Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining landscape. Subscribe to get notifications when we publish interviews on Tuesday and a news show on Friday! 

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