BytePool.

BytePool, 百特矿池 in Chinese, was a Bitcoin mining poolMining poolA group of miners who share the work of finding blocks and split the rewards, so each gets paid steadily instead of rarely. run by Valarhash, a mining company based in Chengdu, in China’s Sichuan province. Valarhash said it had come together in 2019, that it ran data centres in China and abroad, and that more than half of its mining used hydroelectric and other renewable power. BytePool was the second of its two pools, after 1THash. It found its first block, 592,013, on 27 August 2019, and Valarhash launched both pools formally at an event in Chengdu on 9 December 2019.

It grew fast. In December 2019 it had 4.32% of Bitcoin’s mining power, PANews reported, and at their peak BytePool and 1THash together had more than 9%, according to Decrypt. Each BytePool block’s first transaction paid the whole reward to the same BytePool address, and the pool shared it with its miners from there. That reward is separate from the transactions confirmed inside the block.

Valarhash shut BytePool down in early April 2020, Decrypt and Finance Magnates reported, citing Chinese media. Its last block, 624,155, was found on 3 April 2020, a few weeks before the halving, the scheduled cut in new bitcoin per block from 12.5 to 6.25. Valarhash gave no public explanation. Finance Magnates reported that worry about the halving, a lack of profit and a shortage of cash lay behind the decision. Decrypt added that mining profits had halved between August and December 2019 and again in the March 2020 crash, and that Valarhash, unlike pools run by exchanges, had no trading fees to fall back on.