29 April 2024 · Block Height 841343 · Bitcoin Price $62K

It’s a new week!

What goes up (usually) must come down. Miners are tightening their belts as profits reach all time lows. Read on below!

Quick Hits

• RSIC is first Rune listed on a Tier 1 exchange

• Ocean mines breaks 13-day dry streak with first post-halving block

• First known solo miner block of 5th Epoch confirmed

• Wasabi Wallet blocks US citizens following Samourai-DOJ charges

• Runes-based stablecoin project raises $2.5 million

Chart of the Week

🎢 Of Memes And Mining Profitability

You have to admit, we all did have that thought creep into the back of our heads last week with the Runes fee pump: Is this it? Is this finally the new paradigm? The Bitcoin network experienced it’s first post-halving upward difficulty adjustment last week as fees soared from Runes Mania and the network saw the longest streak of fee-heavy blocks in it’s history. So even the most grizzled mining veteran (We see you, OGBTC) had to be asking if this was finally the fee-subsidy flippening.

The answer is a resounding “No!” Let’s do a post-mortem.

Overall, miners collected a bit over 1,200 BTC, or $80 million+ from the post-halving Runes Mania fees. In the ~320 blocks immediately following the halving, we saw mining profitability skyrocket upwards by 80% from $104/Ph/d to $182/Ph/d. (Hashprice is is a measure of miner profitability).

But what goes up must come down (and in crypto it goes down fast).

Within 50 hours of the halving, miners were already even with the month’s hashprice lows of $74/Ph/d, and within 96 hours (after a sucker’s hashprice rally) they plummeted to all time lows of $58/Ph/d and have since continued to decline unrelentingly.

Currently, the hashprice is sitting right at $50/Ph/day and teetering on the edge threatening to dip into the 40s 😱

At least there’s 1 good reason to keep those rigs online :)

Links we liked

Tweet: Runes degens are minting….. punks…? (yes it’s that stupid)

Tweet: Hashdisk open-source Bitcoin miner released

Blog: Statechains, non custodial off-chain Bitcoin transfer

Blog: Bitcoin Layers Risk Proposal

Blockspace Podcasts

🎙️ The $2.1 Million ‘Epic’ Bitcoin Satoshi

(YouTube) We go through this week’s news in Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining, including ViaBTC’s 33.3 BTC auction reward, Jack Dorsey’s Block announcing its 3 nm chip plans for a Bitcoin ASIC, and a behind the scenes look at TSMCs Arizona chip fab!

🎙️A Conversation with Mr. Tarun Chitra

(YouTube) In this podcast, Tarun shares his insights on ZK technology, DeFi governance, PoW vs PoS, Bitcoin L2s, and more. He discusses the challenges of marketing ZK tech, the importance of dynamic availability in PoW, and the potential for Bitcoin to adopt new opcodes. Tarun also shares his thoughts on the future of DeFi and the crypto industry as a whole.

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