Bitcoin miner earnings hit all-time highs last week as the price for the largest cryptocurrency continues to trade around record levels.
Daily miner revenue reached $78.6 million (R1.46 billion) on 7 March, data from CryptoQuant show, surpassing the peak set in April 2021 during the last crypto bull market.
Bitcoin miners earn money in the form of new coins awarded to them for validating and adding transactions to the blockchain network, as well as from fees paid to them by users.
The spike in miner revenues comes amid a 70% rally for Bitcoin so far this year.
The token set a record high of almost $72,881 on Monday and changed hands at $72,668, as of 11:31 a.m. in Singapore on Tuesday.
After a prolonged slump tied to a string of crypto scandals and bankruptcies in 2022, the price of Bitcoin began rallying last year and received a further boost from a net inflow of approximately $9.5 billion into a crop of US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds that debuted on 11 January.
Bitcoin’s upcoming halving in April, which will cut miner rewards in half and decrease the coin’s supply growth, has also encouraged wagers on rising prices.
For miners, the backdrop is a marked turnaround from the depths of the crypto winter, when some succumbed to bankruptcy.
For instance, the Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF — which includes companies such as CleanSpark Inc. and Marathon Digital Holdings Inc. — has more than doubled over the past 12 months.
Firms are rushing to position themselves for success. Since February 2023, 13 of the top mining companies have placed orders for over $1 billion worth of specialised computers, Bloomberg earlier reported.
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