The first monthly gain since March, bitcoin mining revenue increased 10% in August.
Bitcoin Mining Revenue Soars
Approximately $657 million was earned by miners last month, according to statistics gathered by The Block Research.
In the most recent update published on Wednesday, the difficulty of mining bitcoin increased by 9.26% while the hash rate increased by more than 13%.
According to Kevin Zhang, senior vice president of mining strategy at Foundry, which manages the Foundry USA mining pool, the increase in hash rate is caused by “a combination of heat waves finally subsiding (on a global level) and facilities slowly coming online,” “There’s also the added kicker of the higher efficiency Bitmain S19 XP’s finally hitting the market as well!”
Source: The Block Crypto Data.
Only a minor fraction of the pioneer crypto mining profits ($9.24 million) came from transaction fees, with the majority ($647.72 million) coming from the block reward subsidies. Transaction costs for bitcoin decreased to 1.4% of overall revenue.
Ethereum miners generated $725 million in income in August, which is 1.1 times more than bitcoin miners.
Mining Difficulty Surges
The difficulty of mining bitcoin is rising. According to data from BTC.com, the mining difficulty for the largest cryptocurrency in the world increased by 9.26% during the previous two weeks.
The website’s analysis reveals that the network’s mining difficulty is at its highest point since January, reaching 30.97 trillion, with the hashrate currently averaging around 230 exahashes per second (EH/s).
Last month, Texas miners stopped working in order to support the electrical system and save energy during a heat wave. This action probably made Bitcoin easier to mine.
Weeks later, they turned back on, and as the level of difficulty rises, miners may see their income decline as more computer power (and energy) is required, but the price of Bitcoin has remained stable.
BTC/USD trades at $20k. Source: TradingView
According to TradingView data, the price of BTC was $20,060 at the time of writing. It has been struggling for months to surpass the $25,000 level and is down more than 70% from the record high of $69,044 it reached in November.
Featured image from FT and chart from TradingView.com and The Block