Bitcoin miners have achieved a significant milestone, collectively earning a total of $71.49 billion, as reported by Glassnode. This milestone comes as Bitcoin recently surpassed $100,000 for the first time on Dec. 5, marking a historic moment in the cryptocurrency market as its market capitalization briefly exceeded $2 trillion.
Glassnode, an on-chain analytics platform, revealed that Bitcoin miners have earned $71.49 billion since the inception of the network. This substantial amount showcases the robust security and economic incentives that Bitcoin mining provides. The earnings consist of $67.31 billion in block subsidies and $4.18 billion in transaction fees, highlighting the essential role miners play in securing the network and processing transactions.
As of Dec. 5, when Bitcoin reached the monumental price of $100,000, miners’ revenue stood at $71.49 billion. This includes the rewards from block subsidies and transaction fees. To date, a total of 19,791,952 BTC have been mined, representing 94.2% of the total 21 million supply cap set for Bitcoin.
Since the Genesis Block, there have been 873,304 blocks mined, with an average block time of 11.8 minutes leading up to the historic price milestone. With 418 difficulty adjustments made (excluding periods without adjustment), the network difficulty has risen to 446,331,432,498,125,300,000,000. This showcases the growth in Bitcoin’s security and computational power over time.
The network hashrate also saw a significant increase, rising from 128,185 hashes/sec to over 804,407,834,059,443,100,000 hashes/sec by the time Bitcoin hit $100,000. Miners have collectively computed approximately 5.01 x 10^28 hashes, with 37% of this total computed hash occurring in 2024 alone.
In terms of transaction volume, the Bitcoin network has successfully processed 1.12 billion transactions to date, totaling $131 trillion in transfer volume since the Genesis Block.
The journey to $100,000 for Bitcoin was a momentous one, taking three days to achieve a daily candle close above this price level. Over the course of 5,256 trading days, Bitcoin has experienced both positive and negative monthly candles, with an average increase of 37.4% and an average drop of -14.2%. Despite market fluctuations, investors have made a total profit of $1.27 trillion and incurred losses of -$592 billion on-chain during this period.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at $100,290, showing a nearly 2% increase in the last 24 hours. The cryptocurrency market continues to evolve, with Bitcoin miners playing a crucial role in the network’s security and transaction processing.