Bitcoin mining continues to be a very profitable business. As analysts found out the day before, over the past two years, the total amount of miners’ rewards has reached a level equivalent to their total income for the first ten years of the existence of the main cryptocurrency.
This is despite the third halving procedure carried out last year. Let us remind you that thanks to halving, the size of the remuneration of miners for each mined block is reduced exactly twice in the cryptocurrency. The block reward is now 6.25 BTC.
To begin with, a little explanation: two quantities affect the income of miners. This is a fixed reward for each block, and the amount of transaction fees that is constantly changing.
The first indicator is relatively stable. As we have already noted, now it is 6.25 BTC for each block, that is, if a miner or mining pool finds a solution to add a new block to the existing cryptocurrency chain, his wallet will be at least six bit heavier. The reward is halved every 210,000 blocks, or approximately every four years, also known as halving. The task of halving is to reduce the rate of increase in bitcoins in circulation by making the asset more rare.
The second indicator consists of coins that users give away for conducting transactions. The more loaded the network and the more actively cryptocurrency lovers use it, the more expensive it is to make a transfer. This dependence is explained by the fact that the technical capabilities of the Bitcoin network are limited: it is able to cope with no more than seven transactions per second. If a person wants not to wait in line and quickly make a transfer, he has to pay more.
Now the bitcoin rate is very high – as well as the fees. Because of this, the income of cryptocurrency miners has grown significantly.
How much do miners earn
To date, the aggregate income of miners over the entire existence of Bitcoin has reached the $ 20 billion mark, and half of this amount has been earned by miners only in the last two years. This shows that the profitability of the BTC mining process has reached incredible heights lately. As already noted, the situation has developed due to the growth in the rate of the first cryptocurrency and its popularity among investors.
The logic is simple: the rise in the bitcoin rate attracts the attention of investors who conduct more transactions. And the greater the load on the network, the more expensive each transfer is, and the money goes to the miners.
The rate of this indicator accelerated the day before, when the price of Bitcoin quadrupled in less than five months. The main cryptocurrency began to rise sharply in October 2020, when its price was around $ 10,500. And already in January 2021, she managed to cross the threshold of 41 thousand dollars, Decrypt reports.
The current record for Bitcoin is $ 41,940. The cost was fixed on January 8, 2021.
Against the backdrop of what is happening, the Bitcoin hash rate, that is, the total computing power of all ASIC miners, also reached a historical maximum. Given the high profitability, this figure will only continue to grow. True, this process has its pitfalls: most of the miners’ capacities are located in China, where cheap electricity is provided by power plants that are not the most environmentally friendly. That is, in fact, with the growth of the hashrate, the negative impact of the cryptocurrency on the environment will continue to increase. However, in the absence of mining farms, it probably would have been used for something else.
If you want to join the mining of cryptocurrencies using one or more video cards, we recommend using the 2Miners mining pool. Well, to estimate the possible profitability of mining and choose the most profitable cryptocurrency for this, the profitability calculator 2CryptoCalc will help.
We checked the actual data: fees on the Bitcoin network are high now. Yesterday, the average transaction cost was the equivalent of $ 8.7, up from $ 17 on January 12th. As we have already specified, this money goes to the miners.
At the same time, the transfers themselves in the network are also sufficient. There were more than 330 thousand of them yesterday.
Given these metrics, it should come as no surprise that the income of Bitcoin miners is growing at an incredible rate. Note that the same goes for other cryptocurrencies that are also in demand. For example, the number of Ethereum miners on the 2Miners pool the day before exceeded the mark of 8 thousand people, which had never happened before.
We believe that the popularity and profitability of interactions with cryptocurrencies will continue to increase. Still, the blockchain asset industry has recently recovered from a protracted bearish trend, which means that a lot of interesting things await us further.
