Bitcoin and mining : the week when the economics of the network became the main graph

In mid-December, the Bitcoin market again showed that the price movement is only part of the story. Over the week, quotes fell by about 4.3%: from the neighborhood of $89,956 to $86,076, and the dynamics since the beginning of the year is about -7.9%. Against such a background, mining executives look not only at candlesticks, but also at the “internal economics” of the network - how much capacity is brought in and how fast costs are rising.

According to the weekly Luxor/Hashrate Index summary, mining participants received about 3,168 BTC in block rewards over the past seven days, equivalent to about $287 million. Transaction fees added only 18 BTC, about $1.7 million - less than 1% of total revenue. The average block fee also dropped: to about 0.0183 BTC per day versus 0.0224 BTC a week earlier, a nearly 18% drop. When that source is nearly dry, power costs, downtime and fleet quality come to the fore.

The main barometer is hashprice, revenue per unit of hashrate. The indicator in dollars dropped from $38.60 to $36.75 per PH/s per day, although in terms of Bitcoin it has slightly increased. For many operators, this is a zone close to break-even: a few dollars difference decides whether the flow covers lease, service and interest payments. The gap between generations of equipment has become almost an accounting fact: the most efficient farms (up to 19 J/TH) are able to extract about $94 in revenue per MWh, the 19-25 J/TH range is about $72, and the less efficient (25-38 J/TH) about $50. This sets a hard ceiling on the price of energy and makes the accuracy of per-site calculations critical.

Grid parameters are being tweaked, too. The 7-day average hashrate for the week was almost unchanged, and on Dec. 10, the difficulty dropped 0.74% to 148.20T. Blocks in the last 24 hours were found in about 10 minutes and 10 seconds on average. An important detail for buyers is that iron prices are holding relatively steady, with the survey noting S21XP at around $25.70 per TH. On the planning horizon, the hashrate forward market lays out an average hashprice of about $36.63 (or about 0.00042 BTC) for the next six months. This reduces the room for error in the budget.

Investors on the exchange increasingly see mining as an energy business with capital cycles, rather than a simple lever on Bitcoin: the industry's index of miner stocks sagged about 3.8% over the week. Therefore, the key decisions now look down-to-earth - recalculation of production costs by site, discipline on capex and readiness to renew the fleet exactly when the equipment market gives an opportunity to buy efficiency cheaper than it will cost in a quarter.