While Bitcoin's Hashrate Remains Sky-High, Merge-Mined Crypto Asset Networks Benefit
In recent times, Bitcoin’s hashrate has been consistently above 300 exahash per second (EH/s) as multiple mining pools dedicate significant hashpower to the Bitcoin blockchain today. Interestingly, some of the world’s top bitcoin mining pools are also using their hashrate to merge-mine other coins, and these net works have benefited from bitcoin’s increased hashrate. How Bitcoin’s Hashrate Benefits Other Crypto Networks Bitcoin’s hashrate secures the network and provides rewards for miners participating in the system, but mining pools also dedicate computational power to net works like Namecoin, Elastos, Emercoin, and Vcash. For example, Namecoin has a hashrate of around 187 EH/s today, and some of the top bitcoin mining pools merge-mine the network to acquire namecoin (NMC) rewards. Merge mining is a process in which miners can mine various cryptocurrencies at the same time without any additional cost. Merged mining is similar to a person playing...