According to analysts, now their total income exceeds a million dollars per hour. This is the highest BTC mining profitability since July 2019. Let’s talk about the situation in more detail.
2020 was a very fruitful year not only for traders and cryptocurrency investors: it also brought big profits to Bitcoin miners.
According to the analytical platform Glassnode, the day before, the income of Bitcoin miners exceeded the million dollar mark within an hour. The last time such figures were observed in the summer of 2019, when BTC was in a stage of active growth.
Bitcoin mining profitability
At the same time, in March 2020, when the cryptocurrency market experienced a serious collapse, the indicator was slightly above 300 thousand dollars.
Here is a graph that illustrates the income of BTC miners per hour since the beginning of 2019.
2020 is a challenging year for miner rewards to grow. Yet, among other things, another Bitcoin halving took place this year, that is, a decrease in the block reward. According to the rules of the cryptocurrency protocol, every 210 thousand blocks, or approximately once every four years, the miners’ reward is exactly halved for each mined block. Since the last halving in May this year, miners’ income has increased by 185 percent in dollar terms. And all thanks to the rapid rise in the price of the cryptocurrency, Decrypt reports.
It is important to note that the pre-halving mining reward was 12.5 BTC in May 2020, and it is now 6.25 BTC. Despite this, the current indicators are confidently bypassing the spring ones. That is, the growth of the Bitcoin rate was enough not only to compensate for the decrease in the reward in the cryptocurrency, but also to significantly bypass it in dollar terms.
Change in Bitcoin hashrate – the total computing power of all miners – over the last 60 days
As a reminder, Bitcoin miners receive commissions for processing transactions. They do this by solving complex computational problems by adding new blocks of transactions to the blockchain. The BTC network has the concept of mining complexity – a value that regulates the profitability of all participants in the process depending on the capacity of their equipment, causing constant competition in this area. You can read more about Bitcoin and Altcoin mining in our Cryptocurrency Bible.
According to bitinfocharts, the average cost of processing a Bitcoin transaction yesterday was $ 8.4. This is how much users have to pay on average for making a transfer on the BTC network.
Glassnode estimates the total revenue of miners to date at $ 13.8 billion. This is big business, which also goes beyond the classic investment in crypto. For example, yesterday there was a noticeable increase in the prices of shares of companies that are engaged in the production and placement of equipment for Bitcoin mining. We can conclude that this is just the beginning in a new cycle of hype around cryptocurrency mining.
We have checked the actual data. And although the level of the hourly income of Bitcoin miners has returned to the indicators of last summer, the total income for the month so far lags behind the results of July and August 2019. However, December has already become the most profitable month in 2020.
Here is the monthly earnings data for Bitcoin miners from The Block.
At the same time, in December, the share of commissions for conducting transactions in miners’ income is 9.92 percent, which is lower than the results of October and November.
We believe that the current situation for Bitcoin miners is extremely positive. The profitability of mining the first cryptocurrency continues to grow against the background of an increase in the rate and commissions for transactions, while the hash rate indicates the presence of those who want to do this business.
This means that while everything is within the normal range, and interest in cryptocurrencies does not fade away. We hope that over time it will become more and more.
