The US is now the world’s second largest country when it comes to Bitcoin mining output and now claims 16.8 per cent of the total global hashrate, up from 4.1 per cent in September 2019.

“Hashrate” is a term for the total combined computational power used to mine bitcoin.

Research from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance explored the bitcoin mining output of different regions.

However, China still retained the top spot when it comes to Bitcoin mining.

The East Asian nation’s share of bitcoin mining in April was 46 per cent, a pronounced decline from 75.5 per cent in September 2019.

The statistics in this index were compiled before the Chinese government cracked down on domestic miners in June, which will likely push China’s share even lower.

Kazakhstan saw a huge increase in bitcoin mining, climbing to 8.2 per cent of the global hashrate from 1.4 per cent.

The Central Asian country is rich in fossil fuels, having more than 22 gigawatts of electric power capacity according to Bloomberg, which makes it an attractive target for miners.

Russia and Iran took the fourth and fifth spots in the index respectively.

New bitcoin is created when high performance computers compete against other computers to solve mathematical equations, which requires significant amounts of energy often derived from fossil fuels.

This energy usage has drawn significant criticism to the digital asset in 2021; Tesla stopped allowing customers to use bitcoin to purchase its vehicles in May, citing these sustainability issues.

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