Key Takeaways:
SBI Crypto shut its Bitcoin pool on July 31 after hashrate fell 64% in a month, as three mega-miners claimed 60% of recent blocks.
SBI Crypto's official update set the first cutoff at 22:00 UTC on July 30, or 07:00 JST on July 31, with share acceptance stopping and miners beginning a graceful disconnect, according to the company's announcement. A full Stratum shutdown was scheduled by 23:59:59 UTC, while the website would stay open for historical data and payout status.
At about 11:22 UTC on July 31, Foundry USA held 26.67% of attributed blocks, AntPool 17.13% and F2Pool 16.21%, a Hashrate Index reading putting the trio at 60.01%. SBI Crypto was down to 0.72%, or an estimated 6.8 exahashes per second. Its seven-day average BTC hashrate dropped from 16.222 EH/s for the period ending June 30 to 5.817 EH/s for the period ending July 30, per SBI's daily telemetry, while separate operational statistics put the 24-hour average at about 0.452 EH/s by 11:17 UTC on July 31. SBI's official block list showed July 29 as its latest block.
Matched weekly buckets from mempool.space put Foundry, AntPool and F2Pool at a combined 64.8039% for July 20, then 60.7843% in the still-incomplete July 27 bucket, meaning the top tier had cleared 60% before the cutoff. SBI Crypto's share fell from 0.9804% to 0.6192%. Individual pool movements pulled in different directions — Luxor rose, Braiins fell and NeoPool was absent — and pool-share records reflect work credited to a service, so the routes behind SBI's lost pool hashrate stay hidden in aggregate totals. The 60.01% reading captures a moment rather than a lasting level of control, and the destination of the roughly 6.8 EH/s SBI shed remains unverified in public data.
The concentration raises questions about Bitcoin network decentralization, since three pools now control a majority of attributed blocks, though the July 27 bucket spanning the shutdown remains incomplete and leaves any immediate concentration effect unmeasured. Miners shifting away from SBI will need to pick a destination pool, and whether that flow deepens the top three's dominance or spreads to smaller services such as Luxor will only become clear in the next full weekly data release.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
