Bitcoin miners "make money" from BTC transaction fees thanks to Runes fever

Bitcoin halving events often significantly cut rewards for mining companies and Bitcoin miners. However, the appearance of Runes Protocol has changed the game, pushing BTC transaction fees to the highest ever.

The 4th Bitcoin halving event took place successfully on April 20, which was expected to severely reduce the revenue of Bitcoin miners as their rewards for mining new data blocks continued. continue to reduce by 50%. Some analyzes indicate that miners will have to sell BTC to cover operating costs in the near future.

Bitcoin's halving of miners' rewards every four years is designed to combat the potential inflation of the king coin with its ever-decreasing issuance rate. However, it also poses a challenge for miners when they do not know whether they still have enough motivation to continue mining on this blockchain or not.

However, the launch of Runes Protocol by Casey Rodarmor - founder of the famous Ordinals protocol - has made activities on the Bitcoin network more exciting than ever. The sudden influx of transactions clogged the network, pushing transaction fees to record highs and giving Bitcoin miners huge profits.

According to glassnode, affected by the Runes minting activity, on April 20, Bitcoin miner revenue reached US$106.7 million, of which 75.444% came from network transaction fees, both reaching record highs. https://t.co/lVSyqn1UaE pic.twitter.com/xjkkTor2I9— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) April 21, 2024

Bitcoin transaction fees reached a record average of $127.97 on April 20, when the Bitcoin halving event took place, coinciding with the launch of Rune Protocol. This was seven times higher than the average fee the previous day and nearly double the record set three years earlier. The heat of Runes Protocol has pushed up Bitcoin fees even before the halving event took place.

According to YCharts, the total revenue of Bitcoin miners, including block rewards as well as transaction fees, increased to a record $107.8 million on April 20.

This development could bring relatively large profits to veteran Bitcoin mining companies in the industry such as Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA), Riot Blockchain (RIOT), Hut 8 Mining (HUT) and Core Scientific (CORZ). .

According to Joe Consorti and Nik Bhatia, two analysts from The Bitcoin Layer, transaction fees as a percentage of total miner revenue per block have increased to an all-time high of 75%.

The above trend is still continuing, with the ClearPool mining pool on the morning of April 22 mining a block with a fee reward of up to 48.24 BTC - nearly double the number of 27-28 BTC usually received before the halving.

CLSK was clearing 27-28 BTC on a daily basis pre-halving

They just mined 48.24 BTC today.. 😶‍🌫️ pic.twitter.com/dKeISn6w7D— jay (@0xjaypeg) April 22, 2024

In a recent episode of the Hell Money podcast, Runes founder Rodarmor himself expressed concern about whether the protocol could potentially fail. The reason is that if the main purpose of Runes is to create "memecoins" for traders who like to speculate and change quickly, then there is no reason why they would aim for a blockchain optimized for security instead Fast speed or low cost.

However, the Runes fever has not cooled down since the Bitcoin halving event. According to the RuneAlpha website, as of April 22, approximately 6,850 runes have been issued with over 960,000 rune transactions and 80,000 holders.

“The overall Runes ecosystem will likely be worth billions of dollars,” blockchain researcher Saurabh Deshpande wrote in a post on Decentralized.co.