Bitcoin hashrate plummets: Miners face plummeting profits

The network’s hashrate has dropped from a peak of 824 EH/s to 780 EH/s, based on the seven-day simple moving average (SMA). This reduction, equivalent to 44,000 petahash per second (PH/s), coincides with a drop in hashprice, or the expected revenue per petahash in U.S. dollars or Bitcoin (BTC), from $59.29 to $53.41.

The decrease in revenue comes as Bitcoin has fallen 3.9% against the U.S. dollar over the past seven days. As a result, a slight slowdown in block intervals to an average of 10 minutes and 2 seconds could trigger a small difficulty adjustment at block height 878,976 on January 12. However, the expected adjustment is only between 0.3% and 0.4%, which may only provide limited relief to miners.

So far, miners have earned $409.13 million, including $5.6 million in transaction fees according to theblock.co. Currently, high-priority fees are 4 satoshis per virtual byte (sat/vB), equivalent to $0.53 per transaction, and miner revenue from fees is still small. Bitcoin's network activity has also shown a slower pace compared to last year, with only 292,213 transactions processed on January 1, and the daily high record so far reached 534,013 transactions on January 9.

For Bitcoin miners, these developments present a complex conundrum. Falling hashprices, reduced transaction volume, and meager fee revenues have made it harder to maintain profitability. Many miners are looking forward to the upcoming difficulty adjustment, hoping to relieve some of the pressure. However, the small size of the adjustment may not offset the increasing operational burden.