With fees no longer compensating are some miners shuting down?

[The Hidebehinder]

Looking at the information I saw posted right now:

AVERAGE TIME BETWEEN BLOCKS
10 minutes 55 seconds

Blocks last 24h   132

Last block fee
Subsidy + fees   ‎5.704 BTC $377,445

with fees plus reward now being under the previous block reward and time between blocks increasing it is now safe to assume that some miners have/will quit mining?
What will happen to the confirmation if 10% of the mines will quit, blocks for next period being slower, so fees will be higher again, would that trigger a return and then again a shut down?
How long could this game keep going?

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[Jawhead999]

As you can see there's a difference with how many pools have found blocks in the last 1000 days and 100 days, there are five known pools that missing. Not sure if the miners shut down their mining activity due to current lower subsidy + fees, but the fact is current+ mining pool is lesser before halving event.

Mining pool last 1000 blocks	Mining pool last 100 blocks
______________________________________________________________________________	______________________________________________________________________________

https://miningpoolstats.stream/bitcoin

[Amphenomenon]

What will happen to the confirmation if 10% of the mines will quit, blocks for next period being slower, so fees will be higher again, would that trigger a return and then again a shut down?
How long could this game keep going?

Since the hashrate will reduce when this happens, the difficulty of mining a block will also reduce, since the difficulty is updated approximately every 2 weeks (2,016 blocks), so this is not something to really bother about.

[peter0425]

so fees will be higher again, would that trigger a return and then again a shut down?
How long could this game keep going?

Just like uptrends and downtrends in the marker, it is a cycle that could go on forever.

I wouldn’t be too bothered by it to be honest unless of course you are one of those who need to be constantly making transactions and paying high fees. In that regard, I shall thank you for your willingness to pay extremely high transaction fees that would eventually attract miners again. 

[bittraffic]

Nope. From now on, they will instead sell their BTC for a higher value. They are often the source of the most BTC in the market and to make sure they profit from the mining farm they have, they best sell for a price and thus t he bull run will continue.

The worry I think is that most of the farms right now and public companies are owned by institutions which are going to be directly sold to the institutions and the institutional traders.

[Findingnemo]

As you can see there's a difference with how many pools have found blocks in the last 1000 days and 100 days, there are five known pools that missing. Not sure if the miners shut down their mining activity due to current lower subsidy + fees, but the fact is current+ mining pool is lesser before halving event.

Miners moved to different locations because of restrictions imposed by government especially China which is the reason why we see changes in the pools but we can't conclude that miners quit since looking at the hashrate historical chart it's always on the rise.

Even though if there are less miners the average block found time will remain same since mining difficulty will be adjusted accordingly.

[Bitcoin_Arena]

Looking at the information I saw posted right now:

AVERAGE TIME BETWEEN BLOCKS
10 minutes 55 seconds

The values keep changing, though. Some weeks back, even before the halving, the average would be above 10 minutes.

However, I wonder where you got those values from;
mempool.space says ~9.9 minutes
bitaps.com say 9 min 39 seconds

Last block fee
Subsidy + fees   ‎5.704 BTC $377,445

The current fee is not very far different from what miners were receiving before the halving happened because people are paying high transaction fees

with fees plus reward now being under the previous block reward and time between blocks increasing it is now safe to assume that some miners have/will quit mining?
What will happen to the confirmation if 10% of the mines will quit, blocks for next period being slower, so fees will be higher again, would that trigger a return and then again a shut down?
How long could this game keep going?

If some miners quit, of course the network hash rate will drop, but with the difficulty adjustment happening every 2,016 blocks, this will ensure that the average time between the blocks stays within the 10 minutes range.

If the 10% of the miners quit, that means the remaining miners will have their mining rewards increase a bit since they don't have it shared to the other 10% who quit so long as their pool mines a block. So there is nothing to worry about, the Bitcoin network will just be fine.

[stompix]

Nope. From now on, they will instead sell their BTC for a higher value.

It doesn't work that way!
Do oil mining companies sell oil only at higher prices when the price goes down or do they shut down when they are not profitable anymore?
Miners can't dictate demand for Bitcoin, if there is not any and mining is a loss they will shut down!

Looking at the information I saw posted right now:

AVERAGE TIME BETWEEN BLOCKS
10 minutes 55 seconds

The values keep changing, though. Some weeks back, even before the halving, the average would be above 10 minutes.

However, I wonder where you got those values from;
mempool.space says ~9.9 minutes
bitaps.com say 9 min 39 seconds

I assume that was daily block time, it varies a lot, still, it's actually going up.
The difficulty adjustment was at +1.9%  on the 17th, it's 1.3% right now, but the big change will be probably at the end of the month.

[adaseb]

You need to wait longer to see if miners are giving up. As soon as the halving block hit the runes network was launched and the fees sky rocketed. They went as high as 1500 sats/byte and now they are sitting at 200 sats. So even with the reduced block reward they are still making a lot of money from the fees.

And the next difficulty adjustment is 1.5% increase. So more miners were added to the network. When the fees come down to what they were before, we will check back then if the difficulty gets reduced. But right now nothing is happening.

[Poker Player]

Funny that the OP should ask this now when the miners have been making a killing since halving, with people paying whole bitcoins to sent a few satoshis with images into the blockchain. Now the fees have gone down but in the last block for example the subsidy plus fees have added up to 6.3 BTC, almost the previous reward. So the drop has not been such, at least for the moment. And if we take into account the foreseeable price increase this year post-halving, even less.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I wouldn’t be too bothered by it to be honest unless of course you are one of those who need to be constantly making transactions and paying high fees.

Sure, why care unless you're actually using bitcoin, right?  That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, nor does all of this celebration of the last halving (or any of the previous ones) in hopes of a price increase leading bitcoin to the next ATH.  Nobody seems to have bothered to mention any of the potential negative effects, which I assume could be higher transaction fees and the resulting longer confirmation times for those who don't want to pay $100 to send $5.  Or am I way off the mark on that?

And yes, if some miners dropped out of the game because it's become less profitable the difficulty will drop, but in order to reach an equilibrium (so to speak), wouldn't there necessarily have to be some kind of lag time involved while more hashing power comes on board, i.e., other miners/more rigs step into the breach to take advantage of that lower difficulty?

Man, I never really questioned the effects of a halving until this recent one and didn't realize how in the dark I am about mining dynamics.  I've been interested in bitcoin for years, and it's as though I still haven't looked at what's under the hood.  

Funny that the OP should ask this now when the miners have been making a killing since halving, with people paying whole bitcoins to sent a few satoshis with images into the blockchain.

Ha ha.  Miners got lucky because of those idiots whales with more money than brains, but obviously that won't/didn't go on for long.  Now I'm just curious to see what the effect of the halving is going to be in the longer term on fees and such.  Maybe there won't be any change--but what would happen if bitcoin shot straight up to $100k or more as a lot of people were hoping?  What would a typical network fee (in USD terms) be in that case?

[Catenaccio]

That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, nor does all of this celebration of the last halving (or any of the previous ones) in hopes of a price increase leading bitcoin to the next ATH.  Nobody seems to have bothered to mention any of the potential negative effects, which I assume could be higher transaction fees and the resulting longer confirmation times for those who don't want to pay $100 to send $5.  Or am I way off the mark on that?

What happened after the halving with Runes was unexpected and unpredictable but your reminder about negative effects of halving is very insightful. It was forgotten or ignored by many people who shill Bitcoin.

If they believe Bitcoin will make new all time high after halving, no matter how many days or months after the halving, they must note a fact that, with higher price of Bitcoin, Bitcoin users will have to pay higher transaction fees.

Even with same fee rate used for transactions, transaction fees will become higher and more expensive. Bitcoin users pay transaction fee in bitcoins, not in $ but it can not deny a fact that $ value of transaction fee paid in bitcoin will be bigger and more expensive than before the halving, if price increases more.

[Agbamoni]

so fees will be higher again, would that trigger a return and then again a shut down?
How long could this game keep going?

Just like uptrends and downtrends in the marker, it is a cycle that could go on forever.

I wouldn’t be too bothered by it to be honest unless of course you are one of those who need to be constantly making transactions and paying high fees. In that regard, I shall thank you for your willingness to pay extremely high transaction fees that would eventually attract miners again. 

Why tell him not to bother, do you know how often he makes transaction using bitcoin.

Mining may have become less profitable so not just anyone can mine bitcoin today because it requires serious cash in order for it to be successful which we all know. After the halving this congestion issues started which means the network has not been fully decentralized these days and it is as a result of many miners shutting down in the business.

[Yamane_Keto]

It happened when mining was banned in China. It took several months for the hashrate to recover, but since the difficulty is adjusted every 2016 blocks, mining pools during the 2016 block will be able to mine more blocks compared to what they did in the past.

[Crypt0Gore]

The mining reward is definitely going to go down, but right now miners are making good amount of money from the present high transaction fee that Runes are causing on the Bitcoin network.

I think this is not a good time to shut down Bitcoin miners, the ATH is not very far away anymore and this reason is good enough for my Bitcoin miners to keep mining, they should know better.

Unless the miners can't even keep up with the electricity bill, I guess they are the ones that need to shut down their machines, such Bitcoin miners will need to change their location or stop being miners for good.

Let's not forget that new Bitcoin miners will come too, to keep the balance between power consumption and mining reward, right now I believe that Antminer S21 pro is the top one, soon we can start seeing S22 and others with higher hashrate and less power consumption.