Bitcoin and BTC.com Top New CryptoSuper500 List

MENLO PARK, Calif. - Nov. 12, 2018 - PRLog -- OrionX Research today announced that Bitcoin and BTC.com top the first release of the CryptoSuper500 list. The list recognizes cryptocurrency mining as a new form of supercomputing and tracks the top mining pools.

"CryptoSuper500 tracks supercomputers that are used for cryptocurrency mining, an intensive application that has become a driver of technology development and investment decisions globally," said Dr. Stephen Perrenod, OrionX Partner and Analyst and the developer of the CryptoSuper500 list. "The growth of the cryptocurrency market has put the spotlight on emerging decentralized applications, the new ways in which they are funded, and the software stack on which they are built." Cryptocurrency technologies include blockchain, consensus algorithms, digital wallets, and utility and security tokens.

The top 5 pools are BTC.com in China with projected annual economic value (AEV) of $694 million, followed by Antpool based in Hong Kong with an AEV of $582 million, SlushPool and ViaBTC, both in the USA with equal AEV of $444 million each, and BTC.Top of China with an AEV of $400M. The full list is attached below and is available with additional explanation in a slide presentation and white paper at OrionX.net/research.

Cryptocurrency mining via "Proof of Work" is important since it continues to represent the most effective consensus algorithm to maximize security in a decentralized manner. Cryptocurrency Supercomputing refers to large-scale cryptocurrency mining operations which are typically powered by accelerator technologies such as GPUs, FPGAs, or custom ASICs. Bitcoin is the most notable of such currencies.

Other protocols and methods including premining, Proof of Stake, and Byzantine Fault Tolerance, eschew mining and thus do not make use of specialized supercomputer resources. Such tokens are produced more readily, tend to have lower economic value and security, and none are fully decentralized solutions.

At the same time, the amount of energy that is used for crypto mining has been a source of controversy even though it compares favorably with the energy costs associated with traditional mining, refining, storage, and transport of precious metals.

"TOP500, Green500, IO500, HPCG, and now CryptoSuper500 all point to the growing versatility of supercomputers," said Shahin Khan, OrionX Partner and Analyst. "It is time to more explicitly recognize that supercomputers are, and will be, central to important new business applications. I expect we will see similar competitive lists for AI, Quantum Computing, and public Cloud providers."

The TOP500 list of the world's most powerful supercomputers is eagerly awaited twice a year, and the top position has been a matter of national pride and intense competition among vendors.

CryptoSuper500 is the first compilation of such a list across multiple cryptocurrency types which use different mining algorithms and blockchain protocols. CryptoSuper500 uses the economic value of the mined coins produced to make comparisons across coin types and mining pools when rank ordering the list. The first release of the list includes the Top 30 mining pools and their daily economic production, considering which crypto of the top 5 was produced.

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* Note: This effort is an analysis of the technologies and trends surrounding blockchain and cryptocurrencies. It is not, and must not be considered as, financial, investment, or legal advice.

References:
Overall: coinmarketcap.com, coinwarz.com
BTC: btc.com, investoon.com
ETH: etherscan.io
BCH: btc.com, cash.coin.dance
LTC, XMR, DASH: miningpoolstats.stream
Cryptocurrency topics: orionx.net/blog