Capitulation incoming? Bitcoin miners’ revenue drops to a 6-month low

Bitcoin’s (BTC) price shambled post-halving, with consecutive losses and the first “red month” in April, after a 7-month green streak. In this context, the Bitcoin miners’ revenue in USD dropped to a 6-month low, slightly above $30 million.

Finbold retrieved data from Blockchain.com on May 1, showing $30.17 million of miners’ revenue collected on April 30. Moreover, the 1-year chart illustrates this as the lowest revenue for Bitcoin miners in the past six months.

Notably, the most significant drop occurred after Bitcoin’s fourth halving, when the block subsidy reward changed from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC per mined block, drastically affecting the activity’s profitability.

However, the situation worsened as the Bitcoin price in USD moved from around $70,000 to $57,000 month-over-month.

Bitcoin miners underwater, mining with losses as revenue drops

As reported by Finbold on April 23, Bitcoin miners are “underwater” with increased production costs, mining BTC with losses. At that time, data from different sources estimated losses from $36,000 to $52,000 per Bitcoin mined, with BTC trading at $66,000.

Again, this situation worsened amid the most recent cryptocurrency market crash, which liquidated long-position traders by $400 million. According to the previous sources, Bitcoin miners could be losing between $43,000 and $72,000 per BTC in this revenue drop.

In particular, Capriole Investments has the most pessimistic production cost estimation of $128,989 per mined Bitcoin. The investment firm estimates that $77,400 is spent on electrical costs for each produced coin, considering hashrate averages.

Meanwhile, data from MacroMicro shows a less-worse cost/price ratio of 1.66, according to estimates from Cambridge University. As per this data, Bitcoin’s average mining cost was above $100,500 on April 30, close to historical highs in production costs, with miners theoretically losing around $43,000 for each BTC they issue.

Therefore, current data suggests potential industry turmoil that could cause some Bitcoin mining companies to capitulate. To prevent that, the Bitcoin price would need to rally above the estimated production costs, now at all-time highs.

If the production costs remain higher than the mining rewards, measured in U.S. dollars, the Bitcoin network could centralize in a few big miners. Experts have warned about that for years, mentioning the Economy of Scale dynamics inherent to Bitcoin, which threatens the system’s security.

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