The halving of the mining reward that would come with the Bitcoin halving meant a hard blow for miners seeking to ensure its sustainability, however, the Runes protocol recently launched by Casey Rodarmor has generated unexpected profits.
After the halving, Bitcoin miners' profits increased significantly, despite the fact that the reward was reduced from 6.25 BTC for each block mined to 3.125 BTC.
The unexpected benefit comes from transaction fees, which reached record levels, due to heavy network congestion.
According to Bitinfocharts, last Friday, April 19, bitcoin transaction fees exceeded $120. They rose seven times more than the previous day's average rates that did not exceed $20, and doubled the previous record reached in April 2021 when rates soared above $57.
The high cost of commissions recorded on April 19 was a product of the launch of the Runes protocol, which is a token standard in Bitcoin that facilitates the creation and transaction of fungible tokens in this network.
As a result of the new protocol and network congestion, Bitcoin miners' total revenue, including block rewards and transaction fees, skyrocketed above $107 million in a single day, as reported. observe on the Blockchain graph.
This new high profit possibility sends a positive signal for the Bitcoin mining industry, especially for large companies like Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA), Riot Blockchain (RIOT), Hut 8 Mining (HUT).
“Thanks to the transaction fees generated by Runes, the hash price is above $144, offsetting the halving ,” reads the description of a chart displayed by Hashrate Index.
Hashprice, a term coined by Luxor, is a metric that quantifies how much a miner can expect to earn with a specific amount of hashrate. It includes four statistics based on network difficulty, bitcoin price, block subsidy, and transaction fees.
From what can be seen in the graph it is understood that the miners' profits have been above expectations. Even in the two days after the halving, while it is true that transaction fees fell, the profits perceived by miners remained high.
At the time of writing, transaction fees were significantly reduced. And as seen in mempool space, these are in the order of $13 in high priority. With this, the question has arisen if Runes could in fact be considered an antidote for miners to face a decrease in the reward per mined block or if, on the contrary, the fever for the new protocol is only something temporary that will not will be sustained over time.
The answer from many is that the high fees will not continue beyond April 30, that is, in less than 10 days, as seen in a survey conducted by bitcoin Jimmy Song.
In any case, although the Runes do not maintain network congestion so that high transaction fees continue to be generated, these, at least, will remain in the history of Bitcoin as the moment in which miners recorded the highest profits ever. never for fees with a record of more bitcoins, in the order of more than 2.4 million dollars.
