Starting the year at $37,658.84, bitcoin rallied to as high as $72,968.90 before giving back 20 per cent over the last seven days.
According to data presented by TradingPlatforms.com, the high price of crypto assets has seen crypto miners generate US$1.3 billion in revenue last month, the highest value so far.
Crypto mining is the process of solving complex mathematical problems to mine blocks and confirm transactions on the publicly distributed ledger. These miners are rewarded for their services through the creation of new bitcoin along with transaction processing fees.
TradingPlatform’s research showed that transaction fees brought in $192.4 million in February to these miners, up from $116 million revenue in January.
In January 2020, the miners’ average daily revenue amounted to $18.9 million. In just three weeks, the miners’ daily revenue hit an all-time high and jumped from $35.3 million to almost $60 million.
The blockchain data show this figure represents a sixfold increase since mid-October, reflecting the rise in the price of BTC during that period.
The blockchain data also revealed that the average transaction cost was quite volatile in February, bouncing from $11 to above $30 throughout the month. This was still below the record from December 2017, when fee cost per transaction hit almost $42.
Miners changing tactics
As investors continue to cash in on previous gains, miners are now holding and waiting for the price of crypto assets to recover.
According to the data published by the on-chain market analysis platform, Glassnode, bitcoin miners’ net position change reverted to positive on Friday for the first time since 27 December 2020, indicating that BTC miners are planning to hold the world’s largest cryptocurrency.
Since the start of 2021, bitcoin miners have sold BTC in large amounts due to a surge in the price of the digital asset.
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