On Aug. 29, 2024, mining revenues were lagging, with hashprice sitting at $42.98 per petahash per second daily. Fast forward to today, and the hashprice is 10.33% higher. For context, hashprice refers to the estimated daily earnings from 1 PH/s of Bitcoin’s hashpower. Miners have had a couple of boosts lately—a bump in BTC’s price and a 4.6% reduction in difficulty on Sept. 25.

On that day, BTC was trading between $62.5K and a little over $63K. By Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024, the price had inched up, and it’s coasting along at $65.7K as of noon EDT. That’s nudged today’s hashprice up to $47.42 per PH/s. While the price increase and lower difficulty have been a boon for miners, the hashrate is hovering at 631 exahash per second (EH/s)—only 10 EH/s above the 621 EH/s recorded on Sept. 16, which marked a low point after the peak of 693 EH/s.

Hashprice index via Luxor’s hashrateindex.com on Sept. 29, 2024.

Block intervals have been sluggish, clocking in at 10 minutes and 16 seconds—slower than the 10-minute average. The next difficulty adjustment is scheduled for Oct. 10, 2024, and with slower block times, we could see a drop in difficulty by around 2.74% to 2.9%. At the moment, there are just over 35 hours left in September, and it’s looking like miners might not hit the revenue numbers they did in August.

In August, bitcoin miners pulled in $851.36 million in total revenue, but so far this month, they’ve only made $761.79 million. That leaves them needing to rake in an additional $89.57 million in subsidies and fees before the month wraps up—a tall order unless BTC’s price makes a significant leap before October starts. Miners constantly face the challenge of maintaining profitability amid fluctuating conditions, leaving next month poised to bring new tests.