The year 2024 marked a significant period of growth and milestones for the Bitcoin mining industry, as reported by leading entities NiceHash and Digital Mining. The industry experienced a surge in block space demand, increased hashrate, and the emergence of new trends in mining machine models. Additionally, major mining companies underwent expansions through mergers and acquisitions, enhancing their output and efficiency.
In terms of mining developments in 2024, the Bitcoin network started the year at block 823,807 and concluded at block 877,270, producing a total of 53,463 blocks with an average block time of 9 minutes and 83 seconds. The fourth Bitcoin halving occurred, reducing miner rewards from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 per block, resulting in approximately 93.75% of all Bitcoin being mined. Notably, ViaBTC produced the halving block, which saw the highest fees since May 2021 at 37.626 BTC in transaction fees. Marathon Digital also mined the largest-ever Bitcoin block over a month before the halving, measuring 3,990.36 kilobytes. The first 100 blocks post-halving averaged 11.19 BTC in fees.
Despite the challenges posed by the halving, miners contributed a record amount of hashrate to the Bitcoin network in 2024. The year began with a hashrate of 515 EH/s and ended at 807 EH/s, reaching an all-time high of 808 EH/s. This represented a substantial hashrate growth of 56.7% or 292 EH/s. Additionally, the halving event led to a decrease in the Bitcoin hashprice to record lows, with 26 difficulty adjustments throughout the year.
Looking ahead to 2025, the United States continued to lead in the mining industry, but Africa and South America emerged as promising regions due to their underutilized energy resources. Miners also shifted towards a bitcoin treasury strategy, holding onto the coins they mined and even raising capital to make additional purchases. Furthermore, miners expanded their capacities through machine upgrades, strategic acquisitions, and capital raising activities like initial public offerings. The market cap of publicly traded mining stocks surpassed $50 billion for the first time in 2024.
Despite lower BTC production following the halving, a higher BTC price helped alleviate the impact of reduced output. NiceHash and Digital Mining predict several trends for the mining industry in 2025, including increased adoption of the bitcoin treasury strategy, enhanced profitability for miners, and a network hashrate surpassing 1 zetahash.
As the Bitcoin mining industry continues to evolve and adapt to new challenges, 2024 set the stage for further growth and innovation in the years to come. Stay tuned for more updates on the exciting developments in the world of cryptocurrency mining.