Unknown Miners Dominate Bitcoin Block Count with Nearly 30% of All Blocks

The Bitcoin network's earliest years remain shrouded in mystery, as data from Cloverpool reveals that nearly 30% of all blocks mined since its launch are attributed to unknown entities.

This phenomenon is a result of two distinct groups: solo miners and small operations that never inserted an identifying tag into the coinbase message, as well as the Bitcoin network's earliest years when pooled mining didn't exist in any organized form.

The 'unknown' category holds 230,770 blocks, surpassing industry leaders Antpool and F2pool. Antpool ranks second with 109,004 blocks mined, while F2pool trails behind with 98,148 blocks.

Foundry USA, a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, leads the current hashrate despite having fewer historic blocks, thanks to its rapid expansion following China's 2021 mining crackdown. Its block total trails older pools due to its later start.