LIVECryptoverse: Bitcoin miners make money ahead of 'halving'
Bitcoin miners are making hay while the sun shines.
The business has been yanked out of the doldrums by the cryptocurrency's recent rally - and now mining companies are racing to lock in profits before bitcoin's "halving", when rewards for producing the tokens are cut in half.
The next halving is expected in April 2024, a process designed to slow the release of bitcoin, whose supply is capped at 21 million - of which 19 million have already been mined.
"You're seeing a lot of urgency to plug rigs in ahead of the halving," said Gregory Lewis, analyst at brokerage BTIG that covers the 13 biggest U.S.-listed bitcoin miners.
Bitcoin's hashrate - a measure of the computational power needed to mine a coin - has spiked to an all-time high, according to crypto platform Blockchain.com. That means miners are having to use more and more power and speed to crack the complex maths puzzles that earn them a bitcoin.
Bitcoin has risen about 37% in the past month to around $37,000 after months of listlessness, a rebound that's encouraged miners to hook up their powerful computers to crack the puzzles and sell newly minted coins.
The 30-day average of revenue earned by miners has improved steadily this year to hit a 18-month at $32.46 million on Nov. 11, blockchain.com data shows.
However, mining - a highly energy-intensive process - is still not as profitable as in its 2021 heyday.
A measure of miners' earnings from using 1 petahash per second of computing power in a day has risen to over $81 from $70 at the start of November but remains well below a peak of $127 in early May, according to mining data platform Hashrate Index.
