Bitcoin mining difficulty down 3.6% while revenue pops 0.9% in December

Quick Take

  • Bitcoin mining difficulty fell 3.6% in the last update posted early on Tuesday.
  • The estimated hashrate fell as a storm led some miners to temporarily power down but rose back up.
  • Meanwhile, in December mining revenues jumped 0.9% month-over-month.

Bitcoin mining difficulty is down 3.6%, following a winter storm that led a number of miners to power down.

The update was posted in the early hours of Tuesday, according to BTC.com.

Difficulty refers to the complexity of the computational process behind mining, and it adjusts roughly every two weeks (or every 2,016 blocks) based on the average block time.

The estimated global network hashrate fell from 245 EH/s after the last update down to 222 EH/s last Wednesday and back up to 256 EH/s, according to data from The Block.

Meanwhile, revenues went up by a slight 0.9% month-over-month in December, with miners bringing in a combined $476.7 million.

Most bitcoin mining revenues came from the block reward subsidy ($467.34 million) and only a small portion from transaction fees ($9.31 million). Bitcoin's transaction fees as a share of total miner revenue decreased to around 2%.

Bitcoin miners generated about 5.9 times the revenues of Ethereum stakers in December.


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About Author

Catarina is a reporter for The Block based in New York City. Before joining the team, she covered local news at Patch.com and at the New York Daily News. She started her career in Lisbon, Portugal, where she worked for publications such as Público and Sábado. She graduated from NYU with a MA in Journalism. Feel free to email any comments or tips to [email protected] or to reach out on Twitter (@catarinalsm).

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