Bitcoin miners have collectively earned more than $2 billion

[alyssa85]

https://qz.com/955697/bitcoin-btc-miners-have-earned-more-than-2-billion-from-rewards-since-2008/

Bitcoin mining has become a multi-billion dollar industry. Bitcoin miners have collectively earned over $2 billion in revenue since the cryptocurrency was established in 2008, according to an estimate from a new report published by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.

[botany]

I suppose this is calculated by taking the dollar value of block rewards, at the time when the blocks are mined.
Otherwise, the money earned by miners would be equal to the market capitalization of Bitcoin.
And this would exclude the transaction fees.....

[Ayers]

I suppose this is calculated by taking the dollar value of block rewards, at the time when the blocks are mined.
Otherwise, the money earned by miners would be equal to the market capitalization of Bitcoin.
And this would exclude the transaction fees.....

can't be equal to the capitalization, because miners need to sell when they mine, to cover their electricity rate, when they mined with the 50 block reward they were selling already their bitcoin, and bitcoin was very cheap at that point, the same when they were selling with the 25 block reward

[LoyceV]

This is a terrible way to use a bar graph! If it is cumulative, it should be 1 bar with 4 different colors (one for each year).
Now it looks like 2016 earned them 2.1 billion, while it is closer to 0.6 billion.

And this would exclude the transaction fees.....

The next image in the article answers this:

Just under $14 million last year.

I can make a very rough estimate for this year: fees are now around 1.5 Bitcoin per block. That's around $1800 per block, or $14 million in about 2 months. 6 times higher than last year.

[davidmccoy]

The Bitcoin revenue results show a perfect linear regression. Data analysts can predict where these stats are going. Technically speaking, there are no outliers, means there is no uncertainty, one can predict good revenue results for 2017 and next.

[Kprawn]

It would have been impressive if they could have split it into two categories --> 1. Block rewards  and 2. Miners Fees. People will most probably

never know how much they earned, because you do not know when they sold it. I can mine today and hoard until the price is higher and then

sell at a higher price. So I do not know how they calculated this. { immediate selling } 

[botany]

I suppose this is calculated by taking the dollar value of block rewards, at the time when the blocks are mined.
Otherwise, the money earned by miners would be equal to the market capitalization of Bitcoin.
And this would exclude the transaction fees.....

can't be equal to the capitalization, because miners need to sell when they mine, to cover their electricity rate, when they mined with the 50 block reward they were selling already their bitcoin, and bitcoin was very cheap at that point, the same when they were selling with the 25 block reward

That would be the profits and that would be very difficult to calculate. The electricity and capital costs of different miners would be different. It would be next to impossible to arrive at an accurate figure.

[puremage111]

https://qz.com/955697/bitcoin-btc-miners-have-earned-more-than-2-billion-from-rewards-since-2008/

Bitcoin mining has become a multi-billion dollar industry. Bitcoin miners have collectively earned over $2 billion in revenue since the cryptocurrency was established in 2008, according to an estimate from a new report published by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.

We gotta agree that digital currency is meant for something, from less than few cent to 4 digit with a huge trading volume, altcoins returns is just amazing and has a better return rate compare to gold/silver

[Gens09]

Do you ever wonderful how high is there electricity bill.. oobviously they have a very big bitcoin farm ..
Which make almost $8million per month but you always need to consider there electricity bill in 1month..
maybe a million dollar payment in electric bill every month .
But its really good investment mining but considering they still have a really good profit mining bitcoins.

[michkima]

https://qz.com/955697/bitcoin-btc-miners-have-earned-more-than-2-billion-from-rewards-since-2008/

Bitcoin mining has become a multi-billion dollar industry. Bitcoin miners have collectively earned over $2 billion in revenue since the cryptocurrency was established in 2008, according to an estimate from a new report published by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.

Not sure why you posted this, but this is a given fact. The early adopters are surely rewarded for their patience. Imagine, they were just earning cents back then for sure. But it is like an investment where your investments grow. They just invested at the right choice and now they are reaping the benefits of their work.

[lemonade09]

Do you ever wonderful how high is there electricity bill.. oobviously they have a very big bitcoin farm ..
Which make almost $8million per month but you always need to consider there electricity bill in 1month..
maybe a million dollar payment in electric bill every month .
But its really good investment mining but considering they still have a really good profit mining bitcoins.

Mining bitcoin will really give you a high profit and good source of your income.,
It will depend in how big your bitcoin farm is probably they earn a million dollars every month in just mining bitcoin and not doing anything just for sustaining there machines and giving maintenance in it ..But if your a solo miner probably a good pc or hardware can give a 1bitcoin a month or more but consider your electric bill and maintenance also your investments in the machines..
There are so many people who stated mining now unlike in 2011 the difficulty of finding a bitcoin is really hell so better invest in a good machince ..or else you can mine some alt coin and you can exchange it in bitcoin if you want.

[Pearls Before Swine]

Do you ever wonderful how high is there electricity bill.. oobviously they have a very big bitcoin farm ..
Which make almost $8million per month but you always need to consider there electricity bill in 1month..
maybe a million dollar payment in electric bill every month .
But its really good investment mining but considering they still have a really good profit mining bitcoins.

Mining bitcoin will really give you a high profit and good source of your income.,
It will depend in how big your bitcoin farm is probably they earn a million dollars every month in just mining bitcoin and not doing anything just for sustaining there machines and giving maintenance in it ..But if your a solo miner probably a good pc or hardware can give a 1bitcoin a month or more but consider your electric bill and maintenance also your investments in the machines..
There are so many people who stated mining now unlike in 2011 the difficulty of finding a bitcoin is really hell so better invest in a good machince ..or else you can mine some alt coin and you can exchange it in bitcoin if you want.

Stop talking like a Sesame Street puppet.  There's no way in God's green Hell that anyone is going to make money mining outside a pool or on a PC.  Leave that to the big boys in China who steal electricity for a living.   Mining bitcoin for a living is like masturbating for a living.  It might be fun for a while, but it takes zero skill and ptevebts you from developing skills that would allow you to live a more meaningful life.

[Yakamoto]

Nice to see some big numbers like this coming from miners, and in a way I'm kind of wondering why the cumulative revenue isn't higher than just $2B. Then again, they haven't been mining an obscene amount of Bitcoins since 2012, and with the lower block rewards as time drags on it makes a little sense as to how it all works out.

I assume that the value of Bitcoin for these is based on yearly charts and rough calculations as to how many Bitcoins were generated each year at whatever rate it was supposed to be.

[Iranus]

I suppose this is calculated by taking the dollar value of block rewards, at the time when the blocks are mined.
Otherwise, the money earned by miners would be equal to the market capitalization of Bitcoin.
And this would exclude the transaction fees.....

can't be equal to the capitalization, because miners need to sell when they mine, to cover their electricity rate, when they mined with the 50 block reward they were selling already their bitcoin, and bitcoin was very cheap at that point, the same when they were selling with the 25 block reward

I doubt it, in 2009 you couldn't even sell Bitcoin for any meaningful value (hence the story about the guy who bought a pizza with 10,000 Bitcoin), so the network was basically held up by people running mining software on their computer.

A significant amount of the revenue would have been saved then, and I'm sure that major miners like Jihan Wu are speculators as well - I doubt he dumps all his Bitcoin as soon as he gets it.

This chart is just revenues though, it's not an indicator or profit.  Electricity costs will take off a huge amount of the profit, as well as hardware buying and maintenance.

[iamTom123]

Wow, look at those figures! I am not anymore wondering why moneyed groups of financiers are scrambling to get their slice of the Bitcoin mining pie. This is making it very lucrative and in turn the competition makes mining to get difficult. This is a reason why we are seeing a raging debate right now on what to do with the scaling problem of Bitcoin as people are having their own vested interest and profits are their number one priority. This is an industry that is really making a mark on its own and something which our grandfathers never dreamed of...except if your grandfather was Satoshi Nakamoto lol.

[pearlmen]

Even if it is $5 billion, they have earned it in an honourable way and I am sure at one point or the other, majority of people here castigating them would have done so and even more if the opportunity presents itself on the other way round. They have earn it, because they deserve it but they should not blow it is what matters because even other companies in charge of transferring funds across other globe have equally made more.

[Slark]

Wow, look at those figures!

Yeah... especially that transaction fees progress statistic is amazing.
How come tx fees were exactly the same in 2012, 2013 and 2014 and quadrupled suddenly in 2015?
It shows random disparity and looks more like something that is engineered to grab more money from Bitcoin's users.
Progress of adoption is not the excuse here, it seems more like - create a problem, sell a solution type of situation.

[AjithBtc]

Right now the entire capital itself nearing 20 billion. In this level bitcoin miners earning 10% of the entire is really a big profit to the miners. Hope this will gradually increase with respect to the price increase as the capital volume of bitcoin too increases. This shows how hard bitcoin is used all around.

[Reid]

This is a wrong calculation if they use the price just now. But if it is calculated as how the price went up then it might be correct.
Though the problem is they got payments to do also and those are large numbers specially the electricity. Those 2 billion dollars are already spent for different necessities.  It will be wrong to say that theh have saved that kind of money. It is already circulating to us.

[pooya87]

and they continuously keep repeating (specially before the halving) that miners will quit because it is not profitable and bitcoin will crash, burn, die....

meanwhile we keep seeing the hashrate going up