Mining Pool Industry: How Bitcoin Mining Power Is Distributed and Who Controls It

When you think of Bitcoin mining, you might picture a lone miner with a rig in their garage. But the real story is bigger—and more centralized than most realize. The mining pool industry, a network of coordinated mining operations that combine computing power to increase reward chances. Also known as mining pools, these groups dominate Bitcoin’s hash rate, the total computational power securing the network. Without mining pools, most individual miners would never earn a single Bitcoin. But this efficiency comes with a trade-off: control.

The Bitcoin hash rate, the combined processing power of all miners on the Bitcoin network isn’t spread evenly. As of 2025, the U.S. holds 44% of it—mostly thanks to cheap electricity in Texas and Georgia. Kazakhstan and Russia follow, but both face sudden power cuts and regulatory crackdowns. Canada’s cold climate makes it a quiet powerhouse. These countries aren’t just lucky—they’re strategic. Mining pools like Foundry USA, F2Pool, and AntPool operate like factories, not hobbies. They need access to power grids, cooling systems, and legal gray zones. And they don’t care about ideology. They care about cost per hash.

This isn’t just about money. The Bitcoin network security, the resistance of the blockchain to attacks through distributed mining power depends on how spread out these pools are. If one pool controls over 50% of the hash rate, it could theoretically rewrite transaction history. That’s why regulators and developers watch pool concentration like hawks. When China banned mining in 2021, the network didn’t crash—it just moved. The mining distribution, the geographic and organizational breakdown of where mining power is physically located shifted overnight. That’s the real lesson: the mining pool industry is adaptable, ruthless, and always evolving.

What you’ll find below isn’t theory. These are real cases: how Russia’s mining laws changed overnight, why the U.S. became the new Bitcoin heartland, and how a single power outage in Kazakhstan once dropped the global hash rate by 10%. You’ll see which exchanges and tools miners actually use, which countries are cracking down, and which pools are quietly growing. No fluff. Just facts from the front lines of Bitcoin mining.