New data from Cloverpool, the mining platform once known as btc.com, gives one of the clearest pictures yet of which miners have found the most Bitcoin blocks since the network started. The top spot actually belongs to an unknown category with 230,770 blocks, roughly 24% of the total. That is ahead of every named pool in history, but the label doesn’t refer to a single miner.
Who are the unknown miners?
There are two main groups in that bucket. The first is made up of solo miners and small operations that never tagged their coinbase message with an identifier. Some left that field blank, so blockchain explorers can’t assign their blocks to any pool. The second group is older: it covers the early years before organized pool mining existed. That includes Satoshi Nakamoto’s solo blocks from 2009 and early 2010. Researchers have long estimated Nakamoto’s holdings at close to one million BTC based on those untouched early rewards.
Named pools and their place in history
Among named mining pools, Antpool sits in second place all-time with 109,004 blocks, or about 11.35% of everything mined. The pool was tied to Bitmain and became independent overseas in 2021. F2pool is third with 98,148 blocks, around 10.22%. Founded in 2013, F2pool is often described as China’s oldest major public mining pool and once held a big share of the network’s hashrate.
Foundry USA is fourth with 72,569 blocks, about 7.56%. It started in late 2020 and expanded quickly after China’s 2021 mining crackdown sent hashrate to North America. Foundry now serves many publicly traded mining companies and usually leads by live hashrate, even though its all-time block count sits below older pools.
Older and defunct pools still show up in the historical numbers. ViaBTC has mined over 52,000 blocks. Braiins Pool, once called Slushpool, dates to 2010 and remains the oldest continuous public pool. BTC Guild shut down in 2015 but still accounts for over 32,000 blocks. Ghash.IO briefly moved past 50% of network hashrate in 2014 and closed in 2016. Poolin, once the largest pool in 2019, later dealt with withdrawals, IOUs, and a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in 2026.
Why the all-time numbers matter
The unknown block count is a reminder that Bitcoin’s early record is not fully documented. There is no protocol rule that forces miners to label their blocks. So the unknown category works as a rough proxy for the parts of Bitcoin’s history that remain unresolved, including how much Satoshi Nakamoto actually mined.
For today’s mining industry, concentration is still the main concern. Foundry, Antpool, F2pool, and ViaBTC control most new blocks by live hashrate. That level of control has been a worry since the Ghash.IO scare and continues to shape conversations about risk in pooled mining.
