Key Industry Developments Revealed (Report)

The year 2024 saw significant developments and historical milestones in the Bitcoin mining industry. According to a report by Bitcoin mining entities NiceHash and Digital Mining, 2024 was a record year for the promising industry.

NiceHash and Digital Mining revealed that in 2024, the mining industry witnessed a huge demand for block space, an increase in hashrate and new trends in mining machine models. Large mining companies also expanded through mergers and acquisitions, improving their production and efficiency.

Evolution of mining in 2024

In 2024, the Bitcoin network started at block 823,807 and ended at block 877,270 after producing 53,463 blocks with an average block time of 9 minutes and 83 seconds. By the fourth Bitcoin halving, which reduced miner rewards from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC per block, about 93.75% of all Bitcoin had been mined.

Bitcoin miner ViaBTC produced the halving block, which recorded the highest fees seen since May 2021: 37,626 BTC in transaction fees. More than a month before the halving, Marathon Digital mined the largest Bitcoin block in history, at 3,990.36 kilobytes. In particular, the first 100 blocks after the last halving averaged 11.19 BTC in fees.

Although the halving made 2024 a challenging year for miners, these entities still added a record amount of hashrate to the Bitcoin network. The year started with a hashrate of 515 EH/s and ended with 807 EH/s after reaching an all-time high of 808 EH/s. This represented a hashrate growth of 56.7% or 292 EH/s.

In addition, the halving event caused Bitcoin’s hash price to drop to all-time lows, while the network saw 26 difficulty adjustments.

Predictions for 2025

The United States maintained its dominant position among the leading regions in the mining industry. However, NiceHash and Digital Mining found that Africa and South America are emerging regions as miners tap into their underutilized energy resources.

Additionally, there was a notable shift among Bitcoin miners, with many pivoting to a bitcoin treasury (BTC) strategy. Several miners not only decided to keep the coins they produced, but also took steps to raise capital to make additional purchases.

In addition, miners expanded their capabilities by upgrading their mining machines, pursuing strategic acquisitions, and raising new capital through various means, including initial public offerings. In fact, the market capitalization of publicly traded mining stocks surpassed $50 billion for the first time.

Interestingly, the halving event led to a reduction in BTC production in 2024, but a higher BTC price helped ease the impact of the reduction in production.

Meanwhile, NiceHash and Digital Mining outlined several predictions for the mining industry in 2025, including wider adoption of the bitcoin treasury strategy, higher profitability for miners, and network hashrate exceeding 1 zetahash.

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