Over the weekend, Bitcoin miners collected more in transaction fees than the newly produced BTCs. Furthermore, mining profitability reached its highest level since May 2022. Jameson Lopp, the co-founder of Casa HODL, shared an example block related to Bitcoin miners’ production.
A block awarded to a miner from the Braiins mining pool provided a significant allowance of approximately $570,000 in transaction fees for the specified period, amounting to 13.4 BTC. Bitcoin educator Kashif Raza stated that this was more encouraging for miners, and highlighted that ordinals were a boon for miners but a nightmare for individuals sending microtransactions.
According to BitInfoCharts, the average BTC transaction fees have surged to the highest levels since April 2021. The cost of a Bitcoin transaction over the weekend also rose to $37.
Cryptographer Adam Back emphasized that ordinals are permanent and people should stop complaining about them. He pointed out that high fees encourage the adoption of Layer-2 and force innovation, asking people to remain calm and build something.
It is also added that miners can expect an even more profitable period in the coming days. Additionally, the profitability or hash price is drawing attention by reaching its highest level in 19 months, surpassing even the last ordinal frenzy in May. According to Hashrate Index, the hash price rose to $0.130 per TH/s per day on December 17th. The last time it was higher than today was in May 2022. However, it is still below the all-time high of $0.400 in June 2019. The hash price is a function dependent on factors such as network difficulty, Bitcoin price, block reward, and transaction fees.