Data insight · Oct 14, 2026 · 4 min read
F2Pool now finds one bitcoin block in six, up from one in ten. Foundry's share fell to 25%
Foundry USA found 32% of bitcoin's blocks in early 2025 and 25% in the last 30 days. F2Pool went from 10% to 16% and AntPool from 19% to 21%. Two small pools have closed or are closing, and the biggest shift came in the last month.
Foundry still finds the most blocks, but with a share a fifth smaller than in early 2025
Foundry USA found 8,434 of the 26,510 blocks counted in ViaBTC's mid-2025 review, 31.8% of the first half of that year. In the 30 days to 14 October 2026 it found 1,123 of 4,436, or 25.3%, and in the last seven days 25.2%. That is a share about a fifth smaller for the same pool, and it is still the largest of any.
F2Pool went the other way. It found 10.5% of the blocks in that first half and 16.4% in the last month, so it now finds about one block in six where it found one in ten. AntPool rose from 18.6% to 21.0%. ViaBTC, the third pool of early 2025 at 13.9%, found 9.3%.
The three biggest pools found 62.7% of the last month's blocks (Foundry, AntPool and F2Pool), against 64.2% for the three biggest of early 2025 (Foundry, AntPool and ViaBTC). The top of the table is no more concentrated than it was. What changed is who sits in it.
| Pool | First half of 2025 | Past year | Last 30 days | Last 7 days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Foundry USA | 31.8% | 28.2% | 25.3% | 25.2% |
| AntPool | 18.6% | 18.1% | 21.0% | 21.5% |
| F2Pool | 10.5% | 12.6% | 16.4% | 17.4% |
| ViaBTC | 13.9% | 9.7% | 9.3% | 9.9% |
| Binance Pool | 1.8% | 2.1% | 1.1% | 0.8% |
The shift is in the last month, and two pools took most of it
The past year as a whole hides it. Taking only the 11 months before the last 30 days, Foundry found 28.5% of blocks, AntPool 17.9% and F2Pool 12.2%. The last month is where it shows: F2Pool up 4.1 points, AntPool up 3.1 and Foundry down 3.2.
Four pools lost more than a point each. Foundry fell 3.2 points. SpiderPool fell 1.8 to 7.1%, and found 5.5% of the last week's blocks. SBI Crypto fell 1.6 points to nothing. Binance Pool fell 1.1, to 1.1%. F2Pool and AntPool took 7.2 points between them, most of the 9.5 points that changed hands.
Smaller pools gained too. NiceHash went from 0.3% to 1.2% and OCEAN from 2.0% to 2.4%, and BTC.com, Luxor and MARA Pool each rose a little. None of them changes the picture the way F2Pool does. SECPOOL held at 4.2% and MARA Pool moved from 5.0% to 5.2%: the pools in the middle of the table barely moved, and the movement is at the top and the bottom.
| Pool | 11 months before | Last 30 days | Change in points |
|---|---|---|---|
| F2Pool | 12.2% | 16.4% | +4.1 |
| AntPool | 17.9% | 21.0% | +3.1 |
| NiceHash | 0.3% | 1.2% | +0.8 |
| ViaBTC | 9.7% | 9.3% | −0.5 |
| Binance Pool | 2.2% | 1.1% | −1.1 |
| SBI Crypto | 1.6% | 0.0% | −1.6 |
| SpiderPool | 9.0% | 7.1% | −1.8 |
| Foundry USA | 28.5% | 25.3% | −3.2 |
Two pools have closed or are closing
SBI Crypto, a subsidiary of SBI Holdings, said in early July that it would wind down its pool on 31 July and gave no reason, Decrypt reported. It found 746 of the past year's blocks, 1.4% of them, and none in the last 30 days.
SBI said it was in talks with Braiins and Luxor to help its customers move. The block counts do not show a rush to either: Braiins Pool's share is unchanged at 1.4%, and Luxor's moved from 3.1% to 3.3%.
Binance said on 13 October that its pool will close on 10 November. It found 1.1% of the last month's blocks and 2.2% in the 11 months before. The dates, and what is still owed to users, are in our piece on the closure. Block counts show where the blocks went, not which miners moved.
SpiderPool lost share and also mines the most empty blocks
An empty block carries the 3.125-bitcoin subsidy and none of the transactions waiting in the mempool, which stay for the next block. Of the 52,381 blocks in the past year, 99 were empty, 0.19%. SpiderPool found 34 of them: 0.74% of its own blocks, and 1.6% in the last month, five of 316. Foundry USA found 14,773 blocks in the year and none of them were empty.
The rate is low everywhere else. Among the other large pools it runs from zero at Foundry and 0.08% at ViaBTC to 0.41% at SECPOOL. It is one of the few numbers a miner can compare between pools directly, and it is on the pool page for every pool we track.
A pool is the cheapest decision in mining to reverse
A pool's share of blocks is, over a few weeks, the share of the network's hashrate pointed at it. The pool builds the block and counts each machine's shares. The machine does the same work wherever it points, and moving it is a change of address and worker name. Our guide to what a mining pool is covers what a pool does for one machine.
That is why shares can move several points in a month, as they did here, without any change to what a machine earns per terahash. A pool closing is a settings change for its miners and a balance to collect. Nothing about the network moves with it.
What it means for a miner
Coins per petahash come from difficulty, the block subsidy and fees, not from the pool a machine uses. On 13 and 14 October a petahash earned 0.000476 bitcoin a day before any pool fee, while the pool table above was reshuffling by up to four points. The pool changes the fee, the payout method and the service. It does not change how many coins the machine can make.
That depends on what its electricity costs. The most efficient machine we stock, the Antminer S23 XP Hyd at 8.9 J/TH, makes a coin for about $18,000 of electricity at Nigeria's 3.9¢, against a market price near $83,000. That is electricity only, at today's hashprice, and output is not guaranteed. The coins are made by the machine and kept by its owner, whichever pool counts them.
The pool changes the fee and the service. It does not change how many coins the machine makes.
Sources and further reading
- Mid-2025 Review: How Are the Top Bitcoin Mining Pools Doing? — ViaBTC, 2025
- Japanese financial giant SBI to shut down Bitcoin mining pool — Decrypt, 2 Jul 2026
- Notice on the Closure of Binance Pool Services — Binance, 13 Oct 2026
- Mining pools: pool ranking — mempool.space, 14 Oct 2026
Disclosure
Firsthand Bitcoin sells and hosts mining hardware, including this machine. No manufacturer, distributor or affiliate programme paid for or reviewed this page and we take no commission on the links above. Historical figures are computed from daily bitcoin price and network hashprice, each day valued at its own prices. Nothing here is investment advice.