Are Bitmain Strategically Ramping Up Ethereum Mining?

In their latest hash rate disclosure, Bitmain revealed a reduction in the amount of hash rate they have deployed for Litecoin mining. The hash rate deployed on Litecoin’s Scrypt mining algorithm reduced from 1163 GH/s on August 8th to 659 GH/s on September 9th, a 43% reduction. The block subsidy Litecoin miners are awarded for mining a block reduced from 25 litecoin to 12.5 litecoin on the 5th of August which is very likely to be playing into Bitmain’s decision to decrease the hash rate dedicated to the network.

On the other hand, the hash rate Bitmain have deployed on the Ethereum network underwent an enormous increase. The hash rate deployed on Ethereum’s Ethash algorithm increased from 13.84 GH/s on August 8th to 890.8 GH/s on September 9th, an increase of over 6,300%. This increase in hash rate corresponds with the USD value of the fees which Ethereum miners are earning recently been approaching the USD value of fees which Bitcoin miners are earning.


Source: Bitmain.com