Digital Currency Group's crypto mining arm enters top 10 global mining pools

Foundry, a wholly owned cryptocurrency mining subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, or DCG, has entered the top 10 largest Bitcoin (BTC) mining pools in the world.

The firm's CEO, Barry Silbert, announced the news on Tuesday, predicting that Foundry will soon break into the top five mining pools list.

At publishing time, Foundry has a total hash rate of 2.74 exahashes per second, according to data from block explorer BTC.com. The mining pool is responsible for 1.85% of the total global hash rate.

The news comes shortly after Silbert announced that global Bitcoin miners will be able to join the Foundry pool starting in February. The CEO also expressed optimism about the United States’ mining power, predicting that Foundry will “soon become the largest U.S.-based bitcoin mining pool.”

Officially introduced by DCG in August 2020, Foundry is still far from the world’s top mining pools like F2Pool and Binance Pool in terms of hash rate. China-based F2Pool — the largest mining pool, comprising 18% of the total hash rate — is generating a hash rate of more than 24 EH/s at publishing time.

Launched by Binance in April 2020, Binance Pool is now the second-largest mining pool, responsible for nearly 13% of total global Bitcoin mining power. The pool’s hash rate amounts to 19.16 EH/s at publishing time.

As Cointelegraph reported on Friday, F2Pool’s activity was likely a major reason behind Bitcoin’s recent sell-off, resulting in its price dipping below $29,000.