Bitcoin hashrate plummets: Miners face plummeting profits

Author: Bitcoin.com News

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). The 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.

src="https://static.news.bitcoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/networksd.png?X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UN SIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAYIWLWC3GI3CDLK6L%2F202501 10%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20250110T220312Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=42051cdea63fca5157a188338993eec357b0948ab9c39342dd94eaa309c97aba" alt="Bitcoin's computing power has dropped sharply: miners face the test of plummeting profits">

The decrease in revenue is due to Bitcoin’s 3.9% decline 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 provide only limited relief to miners.

So far, miners have earned $409.13 million, including $5.6 million in transaction fees according to theblock.co data. With high-priority fees currently at 4 satoshis per virtual byte (sat/vB), equivalent to $0.53 per transaction, miner revenue from fees remains minimal. Bitcoin’s network activity has also shown a slower pace than last year, with only 292,213 transactions processed on January 1, and the daily high to date reaching 534,013 transactions on January 9.

For Bitcoin miners, these developments present a complex puzzle. Falling hashprices, reduced transaction volume, and meager fee income have made it more difficult to maintain profitability. Many miners are looking forward to the upcoming difficulty adjustment in the hope of relieving some of the pressure. However, the small size of the adjustment may not offset the increasing operational burden.