Bitcoin only happens once every 4 years.”cut in half” was held late last week, Virtual currency miners’ income has decreased significantlyBecause the reward for a new data block will be reduced by 50%.
Instead, the simultaneous launch of Casey Rodarmor's new Runes protocol (for minting digital tokens on the oldest and largest blockchain) proved so popular that it caused massive network congestion and recorded transaction fees. This led to the following windfall for Bitcoin miners: Never before.
Bitcoin transaction fees hit a record average of $127.97 on April 20, the day of the halving and Loon launch, based on Universal Time Coordinated. This is more than seven times the average commission rate from the previous day and nearly double the previous record set three years ago.
Bitcoin miners' total revenue, including block rewards and transaction fees, surged to a record $107.8 million in a single day, according to YCharts.
This development could be bullish for major Bitcoin mining companies including Marathon Digital Holdings ($MARA), Riot Blockchain ($RIOT), Hut8 Mining (HUT), and Core Scientific (CORZ). (Marathon Inc. separately announced on Friday that it would rebrand its stock price to “MARA.”)
The quadrennial halving was part of Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto's original design in 2009 to make the original cryptocurrency more resilient to inflation as the pace of new issuance continues to decline. It was an effort to strengthen. However, as miners' rewards decrease, the question is whether they will have adequate incentives to continue mining on the blockchain. This is important because miners' efforts are essential to the security of blockchain networks.
“While we expect the particular frenzy that drove fees to this level to subside relatively soon, this episode is the latest indication of growing concerns about Bitcoin’s long-term ‘security budget.’ It is a sign of Misplaced” Bitcoin-focused investment firm Ten31 wrote in a newsletter on Saturday.
Rodarmor's new Runes protocol can be used to spin up new digital tokens like those common on the Ethereum blockchain, but until now have been largely absent from the Bitcoin ecosystem.
The launch is highly anticipated That's because Rodarmor is the main developer of Ordinals, which has become extremely popular since its debut last year as a previously unthinkable new way to mint NFTs with Bitcoin.
Rodarmor himself worried out loud on a recent episode of the podcast “Hell Money” Whether the rune can fail; If Rune's primary use was to spin up “meme coins” for fickle traders whose speculative interests quickly shifted, why did these traders choose security rather than speed or low cost? Are we instinctively drawn to blockchains that are optimized for?
But they did, and Rune may have exceeded even some of the most ambitious expectations.
According to the website rune alphaas of April 21, approximately 4,923 runes have already been etched, with 801,124 rune transactions and 68,548 owners.
“The entire Loon ecosystem is likely worth billions of dollars,” blockchain researcher Saurabh Deshpande wrote in a post on Decentralized.co.
Several crypto exchanges, including OKX and Gate.io, have already listed some of the newly minted runes, such as SATOSHI and NAKAMOTO, for trading.
Jimmy Song, an independent Bitcoin developer and commentator, writes: blog post The Loon craze has made it almost possible to include trades in certain fees without paying prohibitively high transaction fees, it was announced on Saturday.
“Currently, rune asset issuance overrides almost every other use case,” Song wrote.
bitcoin layer substack Rune appears to be “essentially a big fool's game where everyone loses,” but it occupies block space and “the need to rush development, and the Lightning Network.”
According to authors Joe Consorti and Nik Bhatia, the share of transaction fees in total miner revenue per block has soared to an all-time high of 75%.
This is “a preview of what will happen to the Bitcoin mining economy decades from now. Bitcoin will be monetized to over $10 trillion in assets, demand for the network will be orders of magnitude greater than it is today, and “There were several half-lives,” they wrote. .
Grayscale, the fund manager for the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), said in a newsletter sent out via email on Saturday that the outlook for miners could change dramatically.
“The impact of the halving on miners’ revenues will diminish as transaction fees normalize at higher levels than in the past,” Grayscale wrote.
