Miners revenues drop to the lowest in years as Runes fomo fades away

[The Hidebehinder]

Bitcoin miner profits get squeezed as hash price drops to lowest since October 2023
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-miner-profits-squeeze-hash-price-drops-lowest-since-october-2023

The article is from two days ago but in meantime I see that charts put the income at record lows, I don't have access to cryptoquant premium charts but this one:
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-mining_profitability.html#6m

What are the implications for this, are home miners going to get wiped out by huge companies that have access to investors capital and cheap electricity? Would that be a danger to centralization? Or are miners going to try and manipulate the fees and the mempool creating fake scarcity of space and driving the fees up to compensate for what they have lost?
Can they even do that as I saw people in the mining section saying ?

Note:
I'm no miner, I just a long time played with GPU mining, what 'm trying to see if there is hope for cheaper fees on the horizon and what could make things worse or better.
Sorry for the avalanche of questions!

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[avikz]

I am not a miner too. I don't think we have any home based miner in the ecosystem anymore. Bitcoin mining is an expensive game and individual really need to invest thousands and thousands of dollars to get a profitable mining facility setup. So for miners, I don't see a big impact unless Bitcoin price starts dropping.

But honestly, the removal of runes and ordinals will be positive for the Bitcoin. A lot of people have stopped transacting through Bitcoin because of exorbitant transaction fees. If Bitcoin wants to survive as a cryptocurrency and remain competitive, the transaction fees must come down. Wiping out of these nonsense tokens will be a great help.

[Upgrade00]

This is the case when the mining reward gets splht in half. Fees spiked up momentarily after the halving and compensated for the drop in rewards but that wasn't going to last. Miners have always been aware of the halving event which occurs at exactly every 210k blocks, so they have factored it into their operations and prepared for the drop in reward.

Solo miners have been getting wiped off steadily for some time now. Best way to earn is to join a pool.

[logfiles]

What are the implications for this, are home miners going to get wiped out by huge companies that have access to investors capital and cheap electricity?

I don't think so. This would have happened a long time ago if it was the case

Would that be a danger to centralization?

Nope

Or are miners going to try and manipulate the fees and the mempool creating fake scarcity of space and driving the fees up to compensate for what they have lost?
Can they even do that as I saw people in the mining section saying ?

In theory, an uptrend in the Bitcoin price should be able to compensate for the drop in the halving of the mining rewards. thge bitcoin price in 2017 isn't the same as it is now, is it?
I don't think manipulation is possible.

[tbct_mt2]

In theory, an uptrend in the Bitcoin price should be able to compensate for the drop in the halving of the mining rewards. thge bitcoin price in 2017 isn't the same as it is now, is it?
I don't think manipulation is possible.

Price can increase after the halving but Conspiracy theory like price will double after the halving, as compensation to miner loss in block subsidy reward, it is untrue. Bitcoin miners have their income not only from Bitcoin block subsidy but also from Bitcoin transaction fee.

Bitcoin transaction fee does not depend on halving and Block subsidy, it depends on demands of people and capacity of mempools to handle transactions. If people have big demand and can not wait, they will spend higher fee for miners to confirm transactions.

Another conspiracy theory, did some guys want to do Runes mints massively, to help Bitcoin miners get better transaction fees during waiting time for price to soar?

[Helena Yu]

The miners already taking advantage over inscriptions, ordinals and runes hype since the last year, before that Bitcoin fees is really cheap except during bull run (which predicted would happen in the next year). Before those hypes, they don't mind to mine Bitcoin even the fees was less than 10 sat/vbyte, now why they complain?

Or are miners going to try and manipulate the fees and the mempool creating fake scarcity of space and driving the fees up to compensate for what they have lost?

If there are miners don't want to solving the block, the big miners will solve it.

[logfiles]

Price can increase after the halving but Conspiracy theory like price will double after the halving, as compensation to miner loss in block subsidy reward, it is untrue. Bitcoin miners have their income not only from Bitcoin block subsidy but also from Bitcoin transaction fee.

How is it a conspiracy theory when it has happened some months every other time halving has taken place historically?

In the lastest block, Subsidy + fees = ‎3.491 BTC ~ $220,549. That can easily turn into $440K when the Bitcoin price doubles, as it usually does during the bull run.

Before the halving, Subsidy + fees were averaging between 6.5 to 7 BTC per block. Tell me how much that was in fiat value when BTC was around $20K - 30K?

You can't deny that the bitcoin price uptrend also helps so much. That's why bear markets are a nightmare to miners.

[DaveF]

Big miners don't care. They are in it for the long haul. Good times, bad times, all level out over time. It's just the way it is in business.
Small home hobby miners don't care. We are not making any real BTC anyway after cost of the miners and electricity and so on.

Mid size miners, they if they don't have the capital to ride out the dips it can hurt, but how many of them are really out there.

-Dave

[dzungmobile]

The miners already taking advantage over inscriptions, ordinals and runes hype since the last year, before that Bitcoin fees is really cheap except during bull run (which predicted would happen in the next year). Before those hypes, they don't mind to mine Bitcoin even the fees was less than 10 sat/vbyte, now why they complain?

If Bitcoin miners continue to mine Bitcoin blocks, why do we, as non-Bitcoin-miners, should complain about rewards for miners?

They have their mining business to do and if they continue to operate, it means they get profit or see future with good profit.

As same as in any business, weak entities will be killed by other competitors and in Bitcoin mining industry, the cake is not for every miner. Weak miners will have to shut down their ASICs, stop mining, sale off their ASICs to stronger and bigger miners.

[PrivacyG]

Mining in your own home used to be a thing, but now how many people are still doing it?  I remember there was a time when people were trying to SOLO Mine a Block of Bitcoin.  Now, that is pretty much impossible.

Most of the home Miners are doing it maybe out of passion for Bitcoin.  Or for nostalgia, or to learn more about how Bitcoin works.  To try earning a profit this way would be a waste of resources.  Money, time, electricity, all you want.  And the more people start Mining and building huge farms, the less likely it becomes for regular people to put money on the side.

[dothebeats]

Mining in your own home used to be a thing, but now how many people are still doing it?  I remember there was a time when people were trying to SOLO Mine a Block of Bitcoin.  Now, that is pretty much impossible.

Most of the home Miners are doing it maybe out of passion for Bitcoin.  Or for nostalgia, or to learn more about how Bitcoin works.  To try earning a profit this way would be a waste of resources.  Money, time, electricity, all you want.  And the more people start Mining and building huge farms, the less likely it becomes for regular people to put money on the side.

Solo mining has been dead for at least a couple of years, at least for bitcoin. Those who were mining bitcoin back then may have switched to another coin (LTC, ETH) and could have built their fortune on those said coins. The ones who remained in bitcoin are those who have substantially-sized farms to begin with, and have been expanding ever since due to their ability to take the hit in price drops.

Snall and mid-sized miners will no longer be profitable with the current market. They either need to buy more equipment, point their hashes toward another low diff coin, or sell everything and just call it quits in order to not be on the losing side of mining.

[stompix]

The miners already taking advantage over inscriptions, ordinals and runes hype since the last year, before that Bitcoin fees is really cheap except during bull run (which predicted would happen in the next year). Before those hypes, they don't mind to mine Bitcoin even the fees was less than 10 sat/vbyte, now why they complain?

He should have said it better, it's not overall income it's income per unit of hash!
This is the chart he is linking to:


Look at the drop in the end!

What are the implications for this, are home miners going to get wiped out by huge companies that have access to investors capital and cheap electricity? Would that be a danger to centralization? Or are miners going to try and manipulate the fees and the mempool creating fake scarcity of space and driving the fees up to compensate for what they have lost?
Can they even do that as I saw people in the mining section saying ?

Home miners are a dying breed for years, you won't see them in 2026 other than USB miners for fun!
For the rest, I know what you're trying to say based on your other topic, but it's crystal globe stuff unless you know the price or the price stands still.

[Aanuoluwatofunmi]

What are the implications for this, are home miners going to get wiped out by huge companies that have access to investors capital and cheap electricity?

Everyone of them have their challenges when it comes to mining there are times that things work out in their favour and they earn from what they have as reward, while the one they realized also from transaction fees also have helped many of them to also meet up to their target on income and beyond, and now that the whole thing has been slashed down, they will have to bear it and cover up till things go as usual.

Would that be a danger to centralization? Or are miners going to try and manipulate the fees and the mempool creating fake scarcity of space and driving the fees up to compensate for what they have lost?

I don't want to believe this is possible because if it had been, then almost everyone will  e trying to avoid missing out on any opportunity for earning bigger rewards and this will only be to the detriments of the bitcoin users, so i don't believe in the possibility for miners to manipulate.

[hatshepsut93]

With today's price the coinbase reward has the same value as when the price was 2 times lower, which was during the bear market. Did the hashrate collapse back then? Did miners file for bankruptcy en masse? No, because miners have quite high profit margins.

I wouldn't expect this to continue in the future, because Bitcoin can't double in price every 4 years - that would mean 1 coin eventually costing billions of dollars, but we're still far from the day when mining will be a very low margin business for everyone.

[The Hidebehinder]

He should have said it better, it's not overall income it's income per unit of hash!

I don't know how to quantify the income per unit of hash since those units would be dependent on the asic type.

For the rest, I know what you're trying to say based on your other topic, but it's crystal globe stuff unless you know the price or the price stands still.

I'm speculating on limited knowledge and info, not going to say I can achieve a result set in stone.

With today's price the coinbase reward has the same value as when the price was 2 times lower, which was during the bear market.

I made a mistake between the overall income and the unit of hash, see the above correction, this income per unit is what I was picturing.

Solo miners have been getting wiped off steadily for some time now. Best way to earn is to join a pool.

When I said small miners I meant miners with low gear numbers mining at home but still using pool mining, not solo!

Hope these corrections help the topic from now on.

[OgNasty]

I don’t think we’ve reached a point where mining revenue is dependent on transaction fees just yet. Ordinals and Runes were a gift to miners as it caused them to have a temporary windfall in profits, but it wasn’t supposed to stay with fees elevated that high. It does show that more use cases are possible and miners will have potential revenue sources as the block reward continues to decline.

[legendbtc]

I am not a miner too. I don't think we have any home based miner in the ecosystem anymore. Bitcoin mining is an expensive game and individual really need to invest thousands and thousands of dollars to get a profitable mining facility setup. So for miners, I don't see a big impact unless Bitcoin price starts dropping.

But honestly, the removal of runes and ordinals will be positive for the Bitcoin. A lot of people have stopped transacting through Bitcoin because of exorbitant transaction fees. If Bitcoin wants to survive as a cryptocurrency and remain competitive, the transaction fees must come down. Wiping out of these nonsense tokens will be a great help.

I think only small investors stop trading bitcoin because the fees are too expensive, but for large investors, they still trade normally because if everyone stops trading because the fees increase. So why do fees continue to increase and show no signs of decreasing?

Just like many years ago, mining bitcoin is not too difficult and most people can participate in mining with a moderate amount of capital. But until now mining has been reserved only for wealthy investors, mining has become an expensive game. I also wouldn't be surprised that bitcoin will gradually become a game only for those with a lot of money in the coming years. Bitcoin is a valuable asset and it doesn't seem to need to compete with anyone, it is on its way to becoming a rich man's game.

[dansus021]

Since the ASIC was invented I believe that home miners are going away I mean this chip is fast and sooner or later people are going to farm it and now Bitcoin mining has become a big industry.

Even tho ASIC manufacturers today are going to make more efficient chip the price are going to expensive and we home miner might can order it 1-2 pcs and arrive in 3 month. Im also not miner but I hope Im being miner someday hahhah small right with 100 machine is enough for me to living a life

[Husires]

Mining is still decentralized and you can mine with low electricity and make profits. If miners stay away from mining pools that may have anti-privacy policies, such as those pools that block some addresses, then everyone will be safe.
No one knows what will happen in the future, but if more institutional investors join Bitcoin, they may manage private mining farms, and with the presence of hundreds of these farms, we will ensure decentralization, or that 5 mining pools do not control more than 70% of the hashrate.
If there is no change, I do not think that the mining pools will do anything that harms decentralization, but they may restrict the freedom of individuals to respond to government lists.

[pawanjain]

I don't think there are any home miners left in the bitcoin network since mining bitcoin itself needs a lot of resources these days.
It not only consumes a lot of electricity but also requires continuous maintenance and a huge setup which again requires a lot of space.
All of this is not possible in home these days and even if there are home based miners then the population will be very low.
It's mostly a mining pools and big companies who will be impacted with this revenue drop.