Bitcoin (BTC) mining remains heavily concentrated in the United States, China and Russia — three countries that together account for an estimated 68% of the network's total hashpower — raising questions about the practical limits of decentralization in a system built to resist geographic control.
BTC Mining Concentration
Analyst Lucky flagged the imbalance in a post on X, noting that while Bitcoin's network is technically permissionless, real-world factors have pushed mining capacity into a handful of jurisdictions.
The U.S. leads largely because of institutional-scale operations, access to capital markets and relatively clear regulations in states like Texas.
China continues to contribute despite official bans. Underground and relocated operations there still draw on cheap hydropower and coal. Russia, meanwhile, benefits from low electricity costs and cold climates that reduce cooling expenses.
The pattern is driven by infrastructure, energy access and regulatory dynamics rather than coincidence. Tracking hashpower distribution, Lucky argued, offers a more honest view of where influence within the BTC network actually sits.
Also Read: Dogecoin Drops Below $0.089 On Bearish Signals
Whale Activity and Liquidations
During this period, BTC whales placed heavy resistance near the $70,000 level as U.S. trading hours advanced. Analyst Crypto Seth said whales appeared to use emerging tensions involving Iran as a catalyst to drive the market lower, triggering a cascade of liquidations.
Roughly 185,806 traders were liquidated, with total losses reaching approximately $406.52M. Crypto Seth described the move as calculated rather than random, noting that overleveraged long positions were caught offside. Heatmap data showed short leverage building above $69,000 at the same time.
Miners Are Struggling
As Yellow.com previously reported, fourth quarter 2025 marked the most challenging period for Bitcoin miners since the April 2024 halving, as BTC's price fell 31% from $124,500 in early October to $86,000 by late December, network hashrate dropped roughly 10%, and three consecutive negative difficulty adjustments — the first such streak since July 2022 — confirmed widespread miner capitulation.
By early Mar. 2026, hash price had collapsed to $28-30 per petahash per second per day, rendering roughly 15-20% of the global mining fleet unprofitable, while the weighted average cash cost to produce one Bitcoin among publicly listed miners rose to $79,995 in Q4 2025.
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