Bitcoin Mining Revenue Falls Amid Growing Difficulty

Bitcoin miners experienced their lowest revenue-generating month since September 2023, as the number of coins mined decreased in August.

Miner revenue for August amounted to $827.56 million, representing a decline of over 10.5% from July's $927.35 million, although it was still 5% higher than in August 2023, according to Bitbo data.

This figure for August marks a 57% decrease from the March 2024 peak of nearly $1.93 billion—the same month Bitcoin reached its all-time high of over $73,500 on March 13.

It was the lowest revenue month for Bitcoin miners since September 2023, when they earned $727.79 million. At that time, Bitcoin's price hovered around $25,000.

However, since then, Bitcoin's price has more than doubled, trading at $57,315 at the time of writing.

Meanwhile, the number of Bitcoin mined in August slightly decreased from approximately 14,725 BTC in July to 13,843 BTC in August.

The drop in revenue occurred as miners faced pressure from reduced transaction volumes and an increase in mining difficulty, which intensified after April's Bitcoin halving, which reduced block rewards by 50% to 3.125 BTC.

During August, median fees contributing to block rewards were 2%, and the daily confirmed transaction 30-day average peaked for the year on July 31 at nearly 631,648 before falling to 594,871 by August 31, according to data from Bitbo and Blockchain.com.

Mining difficulty also continued to rise, reaching an all-time high of 89.47 trillion in August, up from 86.87 trillion in July.

The increased difficulty and reduced profitability of Bitcoin mining have led some miners to redirect their computing power to artificial intelligence, with some deals earning miners billions of dollars.

Sources:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-miner-monthly-revenue-11-month-low

https://charts.bitbo.io/miner-monthly-revenue/

https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/n-transactions

https://explorer.btc.com/btc/insights-difficulty?chart=difficulty