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At the time of writing, only one coin among the top ten cryptoassets by market capitalization is a proof-of-work (PoW) token, and of the top 20, only three tokens utilize a PoW consensus mechanism. Also, out of 50 of the largest cryptocurrencies by valuation, only six use PoW, and of all of them, that’s about 230 exahashes per second (EH/s) hashpower combined.
With Ethereum changing from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS), only 12% of the top 50 coins now utilize PoW. Six cryptoasset networks use PoW consensus mechanisms such as SHA256 or Scrypt to verify transactions and mint new coins. Bitcoin.com News recently reported how the top ten would only see one PoW asset remain, and at the time of writing it is bitcoin (BTC). Dogecoin (DOGE) was a top ten contender recently, but the meme token’s market cap has been pushed down to 11th place.
That leaves ethereum classic (ETC) as the third PoW coin in the top 20 ranking today. Doge has approximately 429 terahash per second (TH/s) hashrate or 0.00042994 EH/s. ETC has even less at 0.00022551 EH/s, which equates to 225 TH/s of hashpower. Following ETC is litecoin (LTC), which is the fourth ranked PoW coin in the top 50. About 0.000469 EH/s or 469 TH/s is dedicated to the Litecoin chain today. Behind LTC is monero (XMR) with 2.71 gigahash per second (GH/s) hash rate. The last and final PoW coin of the top 50 crypto assets by market cap is bitcoin cash (BCH).
Bitcoin Cash currently has 1.28 EH/s of hashpower dedicated to the BCH blockchain. Bitcoin (BTC) has 238 EH/s, and between all six PoW networks there is close to 240 EH/s hashpower securing all six chains. While BTC’s market cap commands 37.7% of the entire crypto-economy’s net worth, of every PoW coin in existence, BTC represents 94% of the PoW coin economy’s USD value.
Eight years ago, PoW cryptoassets dominated the pack of top ratings, and now there are only six PoW cryptoassets in the top 50. It will be interesting to see what the trend looks like in another eight years, and whether the PoW dominance is or does not continue to slide.
What do you think about the fact that only six coins out of the top 50 crypto-letters are proof-of-work coins? Let us know what you think about this topic in the comments section below.
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