Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) miners earned over $15 billion and $16.5 billion respectively in 2021. A record year in terms of revenue.
Bitcoin miners hit the jackpot
Bitcoin (BTC) miners shared more than $15 billion in revenue during 2021, according to the latest report from The Block. This estimate represents a 206% increase over the year 2020.
Miners’ revenues are estimated based on the assumption that miners sell their BTC immediately, which is not entirely accurate as some miners hold onto their cryptocurrencies for weeks and months.
Bitcoin’s hash rate, a measure of miner performance, had reached a new all-time high of 166 million TH/s in April. The network’s total computing power fell sharply by 50% between May and June before recovering to record levels by the end of the year.
Bitcoin hash rate evolution (MM 30 days) – Blockchain.com
Ether miners not left behind
Ether miners, meanwhile, generated a total of $16.5 billion in revenue, which represents a 678% increase over 2020.
This record can be attributed to a significant increase in activity on the network due to the development of decentralised finance (DeFi) and the explosion of non-fungible tokens (NFTs)
This record was also achieved despite the implementation of EIP-1559 in July 2021. This “burn” mechanism destroyed part of the transaction fees. That’s still 1.25 million ETH that were burned and did not go into the miners’ pockets.
Like Bitcoin, Ethereum’s hash rate took a hit in May and June, but quickly recovered. The network’s computing power surpassed its all-time high of August 2018 by reaching a record high rate of 819 TH/s at the end of November. Year-to-date, Ethereum’s hash rate has increased by 187%.
