Author: Bitcoin.com News

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

The decrease in revenue comes as Bitcoin has fallen 3.9% against the US dollar over the past seven days. As a result, block intervals have slowed slightly to an average of 10 minutes and 2 seconds, potentially triggering a small difficulty adjustment when block height 878,976 is reached on January 12. However, the expected adjustment is only between 0.3% and 0.4%, which may only provide limited relief to miners.

To date, miners have earned $409.13 million, including $5.6 million in transaction fees according to theblock.co data. Currently, the high-priority fee is 4 satoshis per virtual byte (sat/vB), equivalent to $0.53 per transaction, and miner revenue derived from the fees is still minimal. Bitcoin network activity has also shown a slower pace than last year, with only 292,213 transactions processed on January 1st, with the highest daily record to date reaching 534,013 transactions on January 9th.

For Bitcoin miners, these developments present a complex puzzle. Declining hashprice, reduced transaction volume and meager fee income have exacerbated the difficulty of maintaining profitability. Many miners are looking forward to the upcoming difficulty adjustment in hopes of taking some of the pressure off. However, the small magnitude of the adjustment may not offset the increasing operational burden.