Bitcoin 'hash price' slides to all-time low following fourth halving event

Bitcoin BTC -1.91% 's so-called hash price has dropped to fresh all-time lows following Bitcoin’s fourth halving on April 20, despite a brief jump in revenue attributed to the hype surrounding Runes etching and hash rate remaining at comparatively high levels.

Hash price is a term coined by Bitcoin mining services firm Luxor, referring to the expected value of 1 PH/s or 1 TH/s of hashing power per day. The metric quantifies how much a miner can expect to earn from a specific quantity of hash rate.

According to data from Hashrate Index, hash price fell below $50 per PH/s per day ($0.05 per TH/s per day) for the first time in its history today as bitcoin’s price fell below $63,000 following miners’ subsidy reward drop from 6.25 BTC per block to 3.125 BTC post-halving.

The Bitcoin hash price is now 10% lower than the previous record low of around $55 PH/s per day ($0.055 per TH/s per day) at the bottom of the bear market in November 2022, when bitcoin was trading for around $16,000.

Bitcoin hash price. Image: Hashrate Index.

After halving block 840,000 generated $2.4 million in fees — far exceeding the approximate $200,000 worth of block subsidy reward — bitcoin went on a record 104-block run of transaction fee rewards higher than the subsidy, according to the Bitcoin explorer Mempool.

Much of that transaction fee activity can be attributed to the hype surrounding Runes — a new fungible token standard for Bitcoin developed by Ordinals creator Casey Rodarmor, offering a more efficient solution for etching (creating) tokens on Bitcoin, which was launched at the halving

Runes generated over $135 million in fees for miners during their first week, pushing up average transaction fees on the Bitcoin network and hash price to $182 per PH/s per day ($0.18 per TH/s per day) on April 21 — the highest in two years.

However, transaction fee rewards have since reduced considerably, with hash price subsequently falling to its fresh all-time low in the early hours of Monday morning.

The impact of the drop in hash price on hash rate (the total computational power dedicated to the network by miners) remains to be seen, with the seven-day moving average currently holding steady at around 640 EH/s, according to The Block’s data dashboard.

However, the slowing rate of block production since Bitcoin’s last difficulty adjustment on April 24, with an average block time currently above the 10-minute target interval, could be indicative of a declining network hash rate.

Public miners considerably built up their operations in the prior halving cycle, with Bernstein analysts Gautam Chhugani and Mahika Sapra saying earlier this month they expected the industry to further consolidate toward four leading public miners: CleanSpark, Marathon, Riot Platforms and Cipher Mining.

Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.

© 2023 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。