Morning Edition · Thursday, July 9, 2026
Bitcoin Mining Splits Into Two Tiers as Hashrate Concentrates in the Largest Pools
Post-halving margin compression and rising difficulty are squeezing smaller operators, sharpening questions about how decentralized the network's block production really is.
The Bitcoin mining industry has divided into a two-tier market, with hashrate consolidating among the largest pools while smaller miners absorb the pressure, according to a CryptoSlate analysis. The report attributes the shift to conditions…
Continue the Crypto Intelligence Brief
Track on-chain flows, protocol shifts, stablecoins, and regulation.
- 5 crypto intelligence signals a day
- Tracked crypto trends, day over day
- Stablecoin and regulatory movement
- Source-grounded analysis with confidence labels
The Global Intelligence Brief stays free.
Part of a tracked trend
Decentralization Becomes Measurable, Not Asserted
Scrutiny of the gap between decentralization claims and on-chain measurement keeps intensifying, pushing the industry toward verifiable metrics that separate genuinely distributed networks from concentrated systems using the vocabulary of public infrastructure.
More from this edition
- BNB Chain Plans a New Layer-1 for Automated Trading and AI Agents, With Privacy and Quantum Resistance Built In
- Crypto Market-Structure Bill Enters Its Final Weeks as CFTC Chair Says a Deal Is 'So Close'
- Privacy Layer-2 Networks Push Confidential Execution as a Requirement, Not a Feature
- Summer Finance Loses About $6 Million to a Flash-Loan Accounting Exploit as 2026 DeFi Losses Pass $840 Million
- Robinhood Chain Will Route 10% of Its Fees to Arbitrum, Turning Layer-2 Revenue Into a Contested Prize
- Dinari and tZERO Launch a Turnkey Platform for Tokenized United States Stocks
- Adam Back's Bitcoin Treasury Firm Scraps Its SPAC Merger as Funding Terms Come Under Strain
- Kraken Leads Europe's Regulated Exchanges as MiCA Rules Reshape the Market
- Nexo Brings Its Crypto Card to Argentina as Digital Assets Spread Through High-Inflation Economies
- Bitcoin and Ether Hold Steady as Gold Falls and ETF Outflows Persist
- Polymarket Turns On Instant Bitcoin Deposits Over the Lightning Network