Bitcoin Miners Face a Hard Month

With the first half of August in the rearview mirror, it's clear that bitcoin miners are facing a challenging month, having only accumulated 36.36% of the total revenue they made in July.

Bitcoin miners are having a difficult month in August, with revenue down 63.64% compared to July, despite hashprice recovering slightly from early August lows.

Bitcoin miners are having a difficult month in August, with revenue down 63.64% compared to July, despite hashprice recovering slightly from early August lows.

Bitcoin miner revenue for the first half of August was only 36.36% of what was made in July, a decrease of 63.64%. This is largely due to a combination of bitcoin’s price decreasing and fewer onchain fees being paid by market participants.

Hashprice, which measures the earnings miners make per unit of computing power (measured in petahash per second [PH/s] per day), fell to a low of under $39 per PH/s on August 4 and 5.

For context, hashprice essentially determines how much a miner can earn per petahash of computing power. When hashprice is high, mining becomes more lucrative; when it’s low, profits dwindle.

Since that early August dip, hashprice has bounced back slightly to around $42 per PH/s, but bitcoin’s price has dipped below the $60,000 mark multiple times this month.

Notably, on August 5, bitcoin dropped to $49,577 on Bitstamp, marking its lowest point since February 2024.

The challenges also stem from market participants paying much lower fees despite ongoing onchain activity. As of August 14, 2024, the average fee paid per transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain was 0.000014 BTC, roughly $0.83.

This translates to a fee rate of about 6.9 satoshis per virtual byte (sat/vB). The median transaction fee has been even lower at 0.0000042 BTC, or $0.249, which works out to around 2.1 sat/vB.

July has been the toughest month for miners in 2024, and August isn’t looking much better.

You might expect a decent month for BTC miners to bring in at least 50% of what they earned last month, which was $951.11 million.

But so far, mining participants have only raked in 36.36% of that amount, or $345.8 million, between August 1 and 14.

In July, bitcoin miners earned $24.9 million from onchain fees. During the first two weeks of August, they’ve gathered $6.43 million in fees, which accounts for just 25.82% of what they brought in last month.

What do you think about the first two weeks of August in terms of mining revenue? Share your thoughts and opinions about this subject in the comments section below.

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