Bitcoin miners are now being given nearly $60 million in rewards every day.
Bitcoin miners were paid $57.3 million over the last 24 hours to secure the bitcoin network.
— Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) November 3, 2021
Summary
Record rewards for Bitcoin miners
For every single block that is mined, 6.25 new BTC are created which miners can cash in at their addresses.
Since a new block is mined every 9 minutes or so at this time, just under 160 blocks are mined each day.
This results in nearly 1,000 new BTC being distributed daily to miners, worth about $60 million at current prices.
For example, yesterday, 1,000 BTC were created and distributed to miners, in addition to a total of 18.12 BTC paid by users to miners in the form of fees. In total, therefore, Bitcoin miners took in almost $63 million yesterday, including fees.
The impact of price and hashrate on BTC mining
While the volume in BTC that miners cash in each day remains fairly constant over time, their dollar value is constantly changing, due to Bitcoin’s price volatility.
For example, at the end of July, it was worth less than half, so even the miners were actually cashing in about half the value they are cashing in now.
It is therefore not surprising that Bitcoin’s hashrate has increased by 60% since the end of July until now. Indeed, if BTC prices remain more or less the same as they are now, further hashrate growth is to be expected.
The consequences of the Chinese ban
It is worth noting that although the current prices are on average the highest ever, since they have never before averaged above $60,000 for so many days, the peak of the hashrate still dates back to mid-May, before the Chinese ban.
This means that the missing Chinese hashrate has not yet been completely replaced, but also that the price curve has once again grown much faster than the hashrate, so that the latter clearly still has plenty of room to grow.
It is also worth noting that since the Chinese have completely abandoned Bitcoin mining, the decentralization of mining has increased.
As of today there is no single mining farm, or pool, with more than 20% of the hashrate, and there are even four with more than 10%, and one with 9%.
All of these things make Bitcoin more solid and secure than ever, virtually unassailable at this point in time.