"Why 90% of Bitcoin's Mining Power Points to Core — The Signal Most Investors Are Missing"
Core DAO Deep Dive Series · Part 1 of 10
There is a number that stops serious blockchain analysts in their tracks.
89.9%.
At the time of writing, 836 out of 930 total exahashes per second of Bitcoin's global mining power is delegated to the Core blockchain.
Not borrowed. Not simulated. The actual proof-of-work security that has protected Bitcoin for over fifteen years — the same computational force that makes Bitcoin the most secure financial network ever built — is pointing at Core.
This single data point is, in my view, the most important and most underappreciated signal in the entire blockchain space right now.
In this first article of our ten-part series, I want to explain what this number means, why it matters, and why the market has not yet fully priced it in.
First, A Framework: The Three Pillars of Every Blockchain
To understand why 89.9% hashrate delegation is significant, you need to understand the problem every blockchain has struggled with since Bitcoin was invented.
It is called the blockchain trilemma. Every blockchain must balance three properties — and the prevailing view in the industry is that you can optimize for two, but only at the expense of the third.
Decentralization is the foundational philosophy of blockchain — the reason the technology was created in the first place. A centralized system can be corrupted, censored, or seized by a single actor. A truly decentralized network has no single point of failure and no single party with the power to rewrite the rules. The blockchain industry has a saying that captures this precisely: a blockchain that is secure and scalable but not decentralized is not a blockchain. It is just a company's server.
Security is what makes decentralization meaningful. A decentralized system with weak security is worse than useless — it gives users false confidence while leaving them exposed. Every significant hack in crypto history follows the same pattern: a project builds an exciting ecosystem, attracts billions in user funds, and a single security failure erases years of work in hours. Security is not a feature. It is the foundation. Without it, everything built on top is a house built on sand.
Scalability is what connects blockchain to the real world. Bitcoin processes approximately 7 transactions per second. Visa processes over 24,000. A blockchain that cannot scale to meet real-world demand remains a laboratory achievement — something researchers admire and ordinary people cannot use. Decentralization and security without scalability produce a system that is theoretically perfect and practically irrelevant.
Every major blockchain has made a different trade-off among these three properties. And understanding those trade-offs is essential to understanding what Core is attempting — and why the 89.9% number matters.
How the Major Blockchains Made Their Trade-offs
Bitcoin chose decentralization and security. It deliberately sacrificed scalability. Its 1MB block size, 10-minute block times, and limited scripting language are not accidents — they are design choices that preserve the decentralization and security that give Bitcoin its value. Bitcoin has never been successfully attacked at the protocol level. But it processes only 5-7 transactions per second and cannot run complex applications.
Ethereum chose scalability and functionality. It introduced smart contracts, a Turing-complete virtual machine, and a rich ecosystem of decentralized applications. But in transitioning from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake in 2022, it moved away from Bitcoin's security model — and has already seen meaningful centralization emerge among major staking pools and custodians.
Solana chose speed above all else. It processes transactions at extraordinary speed, but its validator hardware requirements are so demanding that smaller participants are effectively priced out. This limits its decentralization. Multiple network outages have illustrated the trade-off between performance and reliability.
The pattern is consistent: every blockchain that tried to improve on Bitcoin's scalability did so by sacrificing some degree of decentralization or security, or both.
The Question Core Asks
Core starts from a different question.
What if the trade-off is not inevitable? What if it is possible to build a blockchain that inherits Bitcoin's security, matches Ethereum's functionality, and scales to support a global user base — without sacrificing any of the three pillars?
This is Core's thesis. And the 89.9% hashrate figure is the most concrete evidence that this thesis is structurally sound — not because Core says so, but because the Bitcoin mining industry says so, through its actions, every single day.
What the 89.9% Actually Means
Bitcoin miners are businesses. They operate expensive hardware with significant electricity costs. They make calculated decisions about where to direct their resources based on economic analysis — not sentiment, not speculation.
When a Bitcoin miner delegates hash power to Core, they are not abandoning Bitcoin. They are not splitting their resources. They are mining Bitcoin exactly as they always have — and simultaneously, at zero additional cost, participating in Core's consensus mechanism.
This is possible because of a technical innovation at the heart of Core's design. When miners mine a Bitcoin block, they can include a small piece of metadata in the coinbase transaction of that block. This metadata registers a vote for a Core validator. The Bitcoin block is mined normally. The vote is recorded simultaneously. No additional energy. No trade-off. No compromise of Bitcoin's security.
The result: miners representing 836 exahashes per second — 89.9% of Bitcoin's total mining power — have chosen to participate. Not because they were incentivized with token airdrops or marketing campaigns. But because the economics make sense. They mine Bitcoin, and they earn CORE token rewards on top of their Bitcoin income, at no additional cost.
This is a structural signal. It reflects a considered, ongoing decision by the Bitcoin mining industry about where it believes Bitcoin-native finance is heading.
Why This Signal Is Being Underweighted
Market capitalization reflects current sentiment. It tells you what the market thinks about an asset today — nothing more. It fluctuates with news cycles, token unlocks, and broader market movements.
Security infrastructure reflects structural commitment. It changes slowly, deliberately, and only when the underlying economics justify it.
The gap between Core's current market capitalization and the scale of institutional and mining infrastructure pointed at its network is, in my analysis, one of the most significant valuation disconnects in the current blockchain landscape.
Consider what it means for 89.9% of Bitcoin's mining hashrate to be delegated to a single network. This is not a small group of early adopters experimenting with a new project. This is the near-totality of the Bitcoin mining industry making a coordinated, ongoing commitment to Core's ecosystem.
Bitcoin miners have, in aggregate, concluded that Core represents a legitimate and important part of Bitcoin's future. They are voting with their hardware — the most expensive and irreversible vote in the blockchain industry.
A Preview of What This Series Will Cover
Over the next nine articles, we will examine every dimension of the Core story in detail.
In Part 2, we will go deeper into Bitcoin's specific limitations — the six constraints built into Bitcoin's design that make a complementary platform like Core not just useful but necessary.
In Part 3, we will walk through the technical mechanics of how Bitcoin miners actually delegate to Core — the op_return field, the Relayer network, the Bitcoin light client, and the Delegation Hub.
In Part 4, we will explain Satoshi Plus — Core's consensus mechanism that combines Bitcoin mining power, CORE token staking, and non-custodial Bitcoin staking into a single unified security system.
In Part 5, we will cover Dual Staking and Rev+ — the economic mechanisms that create sustainable demand for CORE tokens and revenue for ecosystem participants.
In Part 6, we will profile Core's validator set — the institutional participants whose involvement signals something important about how serious money views Core's infrastructure.
In Part 7, we will provide a complete account of the Core vs. Maple Finance lawsuit — what happened, why it matters, and what it means for Core's roadmap.
In Part 8, we will examine lstBTC and SatPay — the products that will determine Core's next chapter, and the role of Mobilum's crypto-collateralized payment card in bringing Bitcoin DeFi to everyday users.
In Part 9, we will compare Core's ecosystem development to Ethereum's — because understanding where Ethereum was at an equivalent stage of development is the most useful framework for assessing Core's potential.
In Part 10, we will ask the most important question directly: what would it actually take for CORE to appreciate significantly? Not speculation — but a structured analysis of the conditions, catalysts, and risks.
One Conclusion Before We Begin
Before we go deeper, one observation is worth stating plainly.
The 89.9% hashrate figure exists because Bitcoin miners — rational economic actors operating expensive hardware — have concluded that participating in Core costs them nothing and adds to their income. They did not reach this conclusion because of a marketing campaign. They reached it because the protocol was designed, from the ground up, to make their participation free.
That design choice — making Bitcoin's security available to Core at zero cost to miners — is the architectural insight at the heart of everything Core is building.
Everything else in this series flows from that single insight.
This is Part 1 of a 10-part series on Core DAO. → Next: [Part 2: Bitcoin's Six Limitations — Why the World's Most Secure Blockchain Needs a Complement]
Related Reading: → [How to Make Money with Crypto as a Beginner: 7 Proven Methods (2026)] → [How to Earn Passive Income with Crypto Staking: A Beginner's Step-by-Step Guide (2026)] → [How to Make Money with Bitcoin Without Trading: HODL Strategy Explained (2026)]
Written by Dongbum Kim Former CEO (1,200-employee firm) · LL.B. · MBA (Univ. of Northern Iowa) · 3.5 Years Independent Blockchain Research
⚠️ This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Always conduct your own research before making any investment decisions.
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