- Bitcoin mining profits have dropped to $11.67 million USD.
- Factors like increased mining difficulty and growing energy costs actually reduce profits.
Due to weak market performance and a larger computational demand amid increased network difficulty, Bitcoin miners’ income has dropped to two-year lows. However, miners have been able to recover losses thanks to a continuing decline in the Bitcoin hash rate over the last month.
Bitcoin mining profits (from both block rewards and transaction fees) have dropped to $11.67 million USD, its lowest level since November 2, 2020, when Bitcoin was priced at roughly $13,500 USD.
Struggle Continues For Miners
Although an increase in mining revenue would seem to be warranted by the current market price of roughly $16,500. Factors like increased mining difficulty and growing energy costs actually reduce profits.
In addition, the difficulty of mining a Bitcoin block has reached an all-time high of roughly 37 trillion, meaning that Bitcoin miners must use more energy and processing capacity than ever before to remain competitive. In contrast, the Bitcoin network’s hash rate has been steadily falling over the previous three months.
Moreover, in order to prevent duplicate spending on the Bitcoin network, the hash rate is used as a security measure. But in the broader scheme of things, people have been doing things like buying used mining equipment and moving to places with reduced energy costs.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams thinks the state’s efforts to reduce the environmental costs of cryptocurrency mining may be integrated with the city’s objective of making New York a crypto center.
The act that Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law on Tuesday makes New York the first state in the country to take such a bold stance against the proliferation of cryptocurrency mining. Energy-intensive “proof-of-work” bitcoin mining is banned from fossil fuel power plants for the next two years.
