The profitability of bitcoin mining has been dwindling compared to that of Ethereum in recent months. Ethereum miners had consistently surpassed bitcoin for almost a year. That is until now when the returns from bitcoin mining have taken the lead once more.
Bitcoin Miners In The Lead
Data shows that bitcoin miners have been recovering in comparison to their ETH counterparts. This has been obvious in the closing gap of the last several months where Ethereum miners had barely managed to stay ahead. This would continue until the month of June, an uncertain month for all who are involved in cryptocurrencies, and this, by extension, has affected the profitability of ETH mining due to the decline in price.
For last month, the total amount generated by bitcoin miners had come out to $656.47 million, while Ethereum’s numbers had been a total of $549.58 million for the same time period. This shows that Bitcoin miners had surpassed their Ethereum counterparts by more than $100 million for the month of June.
BTC miner revenue surpasses ETH | Source: The Block
This was shocking development given that Ethereum revenues had actually been ahead of bitcoin by about $100 million for the previous month, and larger margins have been recorded for months before that. So the change has flipped mining profitability expectations on their head.
Revenues Fall To 2-Year Lows
Although bitcoin had surpassed Ethereum in terms of monthly mining revenue for June, the figures recorded for both digital assets speak to an even larger problem. Due to the decline in price across the market, the returns from mining activities, although the same coin volume-wise, have declined significantly dollar-wise.
At its peak, the reward for mining a single bitcoin block was 6.25 BTC. This translated to about $431,250 at a price of $69,000 per BTC. Presently, mining a single bitcoin block would give the miner a total of around $120,000, representing more than a 60% drop in profitability.
As such, miner revenues have now declined to the lowest they have been in almost two years. The last time figures were this low was in December of 2020, right before the epic bull runs of 2021.
Ethereum has not been spared as it has suffered the same fate. Data shows that the last time that the altcoin had returned such low mining revenues had also been in December of 2020. This shows that while the digital assets may compete fiercely when it comes to mining revenue, their growth and decline continue to follow similar patterns.
Featured image from Investopedia, chart from TradingView.com
