A solo-mode miner was able to mine a block of Bitcoin on equipment with a processing power of 750 TH/s
On May 23, a single miner with a processing power of 750 TH/s. He successfully mined a block of Bitcoin numbered 790,958. This was reported by the administrator of Skrool pool Kon Kolivas.
The miner received a reward for the found block in the amount of 6.25 BTC (about $170,000 at the rate of $27,300).
Total hashing speed in the Bitcoin network on May 23 was 367.07 EH/s. 1 EH/s equals 1 million TH/s. Having a processing power of only 750 TH/s. This lucky miner had only 1 chance out of 489 thousand to successfully find a block.
Lucky miner – a member of the pool for solo-mining Skrool. And he will pay 2% commission (0.125 BTC, or about $3.4k). But in addition to the fee for mining the block, he receives a fee for the transaction. Which in this block was 0.249 BTC ($6.7 thousand).
With the current difficulty of mining with that kind of processing power, a miner can mine a block once every nine years on average. Meanwhile, the difficulty of mining the first cryptocurrency is growing. Since the beginning of the year, it has increased by 40%, and on May 18, the figure renewed its historical high.
Our experts note that in January 2022, a single miner with computing power of 126 TH/s mined a block of Bitcoin and received a reward of 6.25 BTC. And that was approximately $270,000 at the rate of $42,800. His odds were equal to one in 1.36 million
Mining company Marathon Digital itself has pledged up to $500,000 to develop the Bitcoin Core group by the end of 2023
Marathon Digital Holdings announced a partnership with Brink to raise up to $1 million to support Bitcoin developers Bitcoin Core. Marathon has promised to contribute up to $500,000 by the end of 2023.
Bitcoin Core is a client (software) for the Bitcoin network operated by an independent group of developers. They maintain the blockchain. And also write updates and make decisions on improvements to the first cryptocurrency network. They also maintain the main repository of the protocol on GitHub.
Brink, a non-profit company, is dedicated to supporting the Bitcoin developer community through scholarship and grant programs. The firm was founded in 2020 with funding from John Pfeffer and Vences Casares. The company’s website states that it is 100% funded by donations from individuals. As well as organizations that want to support the Bitcoin network and protocol.
Marathon and Brink have set a goal of raising up to $1 million for Bitcoin Core developers. They announced the fundraiser at the Bitcoin 2023 conference, taking place May 18-21 in Miami, USA. Marathon has pledged to double all contributions from other participants up to $500k by the end of the year, so if the amount of donations from third parties reaches $500k. Then Marathon Digital will also contribute $500k and the $1 million plan will be met.
Our experts note that Marathon Digital is one of the largest Bitcoin miners. The public U.S. company has tens of thousands of cryptocurrency mining devices in data centers in North Dakota, Ohio and Texas. At the end of the first quarter of 2023, Marathon had $1.3 billion in assets, and about $715 million of that was in hardware and $189 million in digital assets.
This new product from the MicroBT WhatsMiner line of machines can deliver hashing speeds of up to 320 TH/s. At the same time, it outperforms similar devices from competitor Bitmain
Chinese mining equipment manufacturer MicroBT unveiled three new mining devices at the Bitcoin2023 conference in Miami. And one of which was the most powerful one currently available on the market.
WhatsMiner M53S ++, has a computing power of up to 320 TH/s with an efficiency of 22 J/TH. This device is more powerful, but more power-consuming. Compared to competitor Bitmain’s counterpart, the Antminer S19 XP Hydro, which produces speeds up to 257 TH/s and has an efficiency of 20.8 J/TH. MicroBT founder and CEO Zuoxing Yan said this.
Our experts point out that the efficiency of WhatsMiner equipment is measured in joules per terahesh (J/TH) – the amount of energy expended to generate one terahesh of hashrate. If the efficiency of the WhatsMiner M53S++ is about 22 J/TH. That means that this device uses about 22 J of energy to generate one hashrate terrahesh.
It takes 7,040 J to generate 320 terrahes per second. In an hour, 25.34 million J 1 kWh = 3.6 million J 25.34 million / 3.6 million = 7.038 So the device will consume about 7 kW per hour
The other two models presented were the M50S ++, air-cooled and with a computing power of 150 TH/s, and the M56S ++. And also with immersion cooling, this unit can deliver 230 TH/s. The efficiency of both machines is 22 J/TH.
MicroBT believes that the energy crisis and global warming will lead to the modernization of power supplies for mining. And they call “green energy” the best solution. In this regard, MicroBT is working to make WhatsMiner devices better suited to the use of solar energy. That is, from an energy source that corresponds to the decentralization of the Bitcoin network.
Our experts tell us how BRC-20 tokens emerged on top of Bitcoin. And why trading in new memcoins led to a record increase in commissions
A new kind of token has appeared in the Bitcoin blockchain, around which there has been a serious speculative frenzy. Most of these tokens are so-called memcoins. Which are named after famous memes and carry no utility or functionality. In spite of this, they have cumulatively risen by tens of thousands of percent in a few weeks. And provoked a record increase in commissions for transfers within the BTC network.
A new mania around memcoins began with the PEPE coin. Anonymous developers launched it in April, and speculators inflated its capitalization to a billion dollars in just three weeks of its existence.
The interest in memcoins created in the Bitcoin blockchain comes from more familiar token-creating networks such as Ethereum or Solana. The excitement swelled to the point that the volume of trading in Bitcoin Frogs collection tokens (the equivalent of Bitcoin token format NFTs) from May 17 to 18 exceeded that of the NFT market’s main “blue chip” – the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection.
New BRC-20 standard
Tokens of the standard named BRC-20 (similar to ERC-20 in Ethereum). They are digital assets that can be created and transferred on the Bitcoin blockchain using the Ordinals protocol. This standard allows data to be written into satoshi and turned into tokens.
The Ordinals protocol has enabled the growth of memcoins placed on the Bitcoin blockchain. But they have no utility whatsoever. Instead, traders are buying them solely for speculative purposes. Tens of thousands of BRC-20 tokens have been issued since the protocol went live in March. And their combined market capitalization has exceeded $1 billion. The ORDI memcoin, which refers to the name of the Ordinal protocol. But probably not related to its developers, is the largest at the time of publication with a capitalization of about $300 million.
Amid high demand, cryptocurrency exchange OKX announced the launch of its own marketplace for trading BRC-20 tokens. And Binance previously announced plans to add support for them on its NFT platform.
The entire current capitalization of new tokens in the Bitcoin network is essentially taken up by memcoins alone. And the Ordinals protocol itself has severely limited functionality compared to Ethereum’s ERC-20 capabilities.
But BRC-20 could be a long-shot story. If the teams that focus on building infrastructure solutions on Bitcoin (wallets, bridges, credit protocols, etc.) now have money flowing in from major venture capital funds. Also, don’t forget that it adds to the attractiveness of Bitcoin itself, says our expert.
High commissions in BTC network
High commissions
The result of the growing demand for memcoins was a surge in Bitcoin transaction fees. And a queue of unconfirmed transactions formed. Transactions related to BRC-20 filled the network. And led to a high load on it, causing the commissions paid to miners to reach the highest level since April 2021. Since the beginning of May, the average fees have risen about 1,500%, to $31 per simple coin transfer.
When Bitcoin’s transaction blocks are full, the transactions with the highest fees are confirmed first. The pending transactions are in a so-called mempool, waiting for confirmation. If under an adequate load on the network, transfers are confirmed in no more than 10 minutes on average. In this abnormal scenario it is possible to wait up to several hours for transfer confirmation. If not to send it with overestimated commission.
Bitcoin’s pool of unconfirmed transactions has skyrocketed from about 10,000 transactions to more than 350,000 transactions. And that triggered an increase in fees globally. But it turned out to be a lucky scenario for miners, whose income increased visibly.
In total, there were more than 4 million BRC-20 transactions in May. And that represents 60% of all Bitcoin transactions. For the first time in many years, a block of BTC transactions exceeded the fixed fee of the miner (6.25 BTC) who mined that block. This was due to the high demand for space in the blockchain, which was triggered by transactions involving the transfer or issuance of BRC-20 tokens.
Such a situation is abnormal according to our experts. Some Bitcoin developers have expressed dissatisfaction with high commissions. And declared about the fight against such tokens. Miners, on the contrary, benefit from the development of this standard. Which brings them more income from commissions. But on the other hand, blockchain congestion will reduce the popularity of Bitcoin. We need to look for a solution that will satisfy investors and miners, says our expert.
Effects and solutions to problems with high commissions
BRC-20 tokens reflect the process of possible future experimentation in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Even if memcoins end up being a passing fad of the cryptocurrency community. They are already having a tangible effect. It may turn out that memcoins will spur developers to further experiment at the base level of Bitcoin. And that will lead to new scenarios for its use. And new sources of demand for space within transaction blocks. This, in turn, could lead to more sustainable commission growth.
The commission market is critical to the existence and security of the Bitcoin network. Because in the future they will have to compensate miners for the diminishing reward per block during subsequent halving cycles.
Rising transaction fees could also force leading cryptoservices to use “second-tier” technology to cut costs. When a sharp rise in fees forced the Binance exchange to temporarily suspend Bitcoin withdrawals. And its head Changpeng Zhao wrote on social media that he was considering adding Lightning Network support to the exchange. This is a fairly well-known, but not yet widespread second-tier payment protocol. Which is built on top of Bitcoin and designed for much faster and cheaper transfers.
Estimates of the implications of the popularity of BRC-20 tokens vary depending on who is making them. Miners, for example, are happy, of course, as their profitability has increased because of the load on the network. But ordinary users are definitely not used to paying a commission and still getting in a huge queue. That is why major market players are thinking about integrating Lighting Network, but it also takes time.
BRC-20 standard cannot compete with ERC-20
Importantly, BRC-20 tokens prevent Bitcoin from competing with Ethereum as a platform for smart contracts, especially at the basic level. A dynamic ecosystem of decentralized applications is deployed on the Ethereum blockchain. This includes credit protocols, NFT, games, social networks and other Web3 applications. Developers can create them using the Solidity programming language. Which allows a wide range of functions and program logic to be implemented. Bitcoin’s base code doesn’t come close to having those capabilities.
Some traders have managed to make high profits by trading memcoins. However, average market participants should be cautious. Historically, memcoins exhibit high volatility and low liquidity. And their prices often only show a decline after a collapse from their peak values during hype.
Perhaps in the future Bitcoin blockchain infrastructure projects will open up investment opportunities. But high fees will certainly remain a stumbling block, especially when the crypto market is bullish.
Regulation of both ordinary financial services of trading and investing in cryptocurrencies will create a false sense of security among depositors, officials say
The U.K. House of Commons Treasury Committee argues that investing in “unsecured” cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum should be equated with gambling. Regulating the industry without such an approach could create an illusion of safety for investors in crypto-assets. That’s according to a committee report released May 17.
The House of Commons Treasury Committee is charged with examining Treasury spending, administration and policy. With all of its agencies and related bodies, including the Internal Revenue Service, Customs, the Bank of England.And the Financial Conduct Authority, the Royal Mint, and other government agencies. And the Financial Conduct Authority, the Royal Mint, and other government agencies.
Late last October, members of the U.K.’s lower house of parliament voted to recognize cryptocurrencies as regulated financial instruments. In their opinion, cryptocurrencies should be considered another type of financial assets, rather than a separate category.
The committee criticized this position in its report, saying that the government should take a different approach to regulating cryptocurrencies. To better protect consumers from losses due to the increased volatility of “unsecured assets,” such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Characteristics of cryptocurrency are more reminiscent of gambling than financial services.
Which is also supported by data on their consumer behavior, the report’s authors say. They argue that regulating trading and investing in crypto-assets as regular financial services would lead depositors to believe that the investments are safe, when in fact they are not.
In addition, the committee recommends that the government take a balanced approach to investing in cryptotechnology. And avoid spending public funds to support cryptocurrencies without a clear and profitable application scenario. It is not the government’s job to promote specific innovations for their own sake, the report warns.
Our experts point out that last year, the kingdom’s government set itself the goal of increasing London’s global competitiveness in the financial sector. And that includes the cryptocurrency industry. The U.K. is in the process of developing regulations for crypto-assets. According to the Ministry of Finance, they are aimed at realizing the government’s “ambitions. Which intends to make the country a leader in the cryptocurrency industry.
Our experts tell us what we need to know about Bitcoin halving. As well as when to expect it, and what impact it may have on crypto market
The fourth Bitcoin halving is about a year away. This event occurs every four years and historically serves as a bullish catalyst for Bitcoin’s price rise and popularity.
Halving is a planned reduction in the number of newly issued BTCs. Which are created and distributed to miners who perform transaction verification and validation on the network. This is embedded in Bitcoin’s software code to ensure that the total number of coins in the network never exceeds 21 million units.
Halving first took place in November 2012, when the reward per block was reduced from 50 BTC to 25 BTC. The second reduction occurred in July 2016, when the reward dropped from 25 BTC to 12.5 BTC. The third and final halving occurred in May 2020, when the reward dropped from 12.5 to 6.25 BTC.
The next Bitcoin halving is expected in April 2024. The reward per block will be reduced to 3.125 BTC, reducing Bitcoin’s annual inflation rate from 1.7% to 0.8%. The final halving will occur in 2140, when the last Bitcoin will be mined. And the total supply of coins will reach 21 million.
Bitcoin’s monetary policy is unique compared to most other crypto-assets, which tend to have inflation. Dogecoin (DOGE) has 2-3% inflation. And Solana (SOL) has long-term inflation of 1.5%. Ethereum has had a negative inflation rate since the blockchain switched to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) algorithm. As the volume of transaction fees burned on the network exceeded the volume of newly issued ETH coins. Halving occurs not only in Bitcoin, but also in other Proof-of-Work (PoW) cryptocurrencies, such as Litecoin (LTC) or Zcash (ZEC).
Profits of miners
Now the main part of the miners’ profits comes from the distribution of rewards for a found block of bitcoin (newly mined bitcoin). And at which 6.25 BTC is paid out to miners about every 10 minutes. The annual issuance of new Bitcoins creates about $9.8 billion, creating additional selling pressure. Which the market is forced to absorb every year.
Despite the fact that the number of new Bitcoins mined per block is halved. The cumulative income of miners after each halving increased. This is due to the rise in the price of BTC. But when the number of new Bitcoins mined in each block approaches zero.Then miners will no longer be able to rely on rising prices to cover costs.
In addition to newly issued Bitcoins, miners also receive income in the form of transaction fees. It can be assumed that the commissions for this should increase. At the same time compensating miners for the decreasing income from the issuance of new Bitcoins. Right now transaction fees are only 2.6% of miners’ income as a percentage of the total reward per block found.
This year has seen an upward trend in transaction fees. This is largely due to the emergence and popularization of so-called ordinals or BRC20-tokens. These are analogous to NFT in the Bitcoin blockchain, which require space in a block. New experiments with second-tier technologies such as the Lightning payment network or the Stacks smart contract platform. So too could further increase the strain on the blockchain.
If transaction fees don’t rise appreciably. Or miners fail to find alternative sources of income. Then Bitcoin’s long-term viability could be in question. And subsequent halving will put additional pressure on miners.
How Halving will affect the price
If you estimate the price dynamics in three Bitcoin halving cycles over a two-year period. And beginning one year before each halving and ending one year after it, one can get an idea of Bitcoin’s price trajectory as the fourth halving approaches. Over such a two-year period in 2012, Bitcoin gained about 30,000%. And in 2016, 786%, and in 2020, 712%. If Bitcoin performs as well as in the last two periods, its price could reach the $220,000 mark in 2025.
However, past performance is no guarantee of future results. And there are many other factors influencing Bitcoin’s price. Moreover, as Bitcoin develops and becomes more widespread over time, its price may become less volatile and more stable.
Another expectation of halving is less pressure on the price due to sales, especially from miners. Miners are the most predictable sellers of Bitcoin. That’s because they need to cover the cost of maintaining operations by converting new Bitcoins into fiat money. With each halving, the structural pressure to sell decreases. And assuming demand stays the same or goes up, the resulting price should also go up.
Bloomberg reports on growing faith in Bitcoin among investors who fear a U.S. default
Investors would prefer Bitcoin to the dollar as a means of saving capital in the event of a U.S. government debt default. This is evidenced by the results of a survey Bloomberg Markets Live Pulse. Which was conducted May 8-12 with 637 respondents. 7.8% of professional and 11.3% of retail investors will choose the first cryptocurrency as a protective asset. And while the U.S. dollar will be relied on by 7.8% and 10.2% of investors from the two groups, respectively.
At the top of the list of defensive assets is gold. Despite the fact that the price of the precious metal is currently near its historical maximum ($2,000 per ounce). And it was chosen by about half of surveyed investors from both categories. On the other hand, the report notes the current shortage of alternative assets to gold for hedging.
The second most popular asset to buy in case of default were U.S. Treasury securities. Journalists see a certain irony in this, because it is these debt securities that will probably default. But even pessimistic analysts think. That holders of treasuries will be paid, albeit late, as the article says, which explains the choice of this asset. It will be bought in case of default by 14-15% of respondents.
In third place is Bitcoin, followed by the U.S. dollar, the Japanese yen and the Swiss franc. At the same time, more than 55% of respondents said that a default or even its approach would have a strong negative impact on the dollar as the global world currency. Also, our experts note that another 13.6% of respondents said that significant damage to the U.S. national currency has already been done and it can only increase further.
Marathon Digital and Zero Two plan to launch two cryptocurrency mining platforms in Abu Dhabi this year at a total cost of $406 million
One of the largest U.S. miners, Marathon Digital, and developer Zero Two announced the creation of bitcoin mining platforms in Abu Dhabi (UAE). According to a press release, the Abu Dhabi Global Markets (ADGM) joint venture will begin building two mining centers under equipment with a total capacity of 250 MW.
Also Marathon Digital is one of the largest U.S. public companies. Which is engaged in cryptocurrency mining. It has tens of thousands of mining devices in Texas, North Dakota. And other states. according to BitcoinTreasuries, the company ranks second behind Microstrategy in terms of Bitcoin ownership. It owns 12,200 BTC ($335.5 million).
Also Abu Dhabi-based Zero Two develops Web3 infrastructure solutions and digital assets in the emirate.
The site for 200 MW of mining equipment will be located in the “eco-city” Masdar. Another 50 MW platform will be built in the port area of Mina Zayed. Electricity will be supplied to the complex from the general power grid of Abu Dhabi.
Marathon’s share in ADGM will be 20%, Zero Two’s share – 80%. Capital investment by the companies in proportion to their shares will be about $406 million. The digital assets extracted will also be distributed according to each company’s shares twice a month.
The companies have developed a special immersion solution for ASIC-mainer cooling (liquid cooling) to operate the equipment in the desert climate. And they implemented new software for performance optimization. The new solutions were successfully tested during the pilot project.
It is expected that the mining centers will be launched by the end of 2023, their total hashing speed. Also according to the companies’ calculations, will reach 7 EH/s. Our experts note that according to BTC.com, the total global Bitcoin network hash rate as of May 10 is about 337 EH/s.
Our experts named the reasons for the large “queue” of transactions in BTC network. And described the ways to solve this problem, as well as its impact on the price of the leading digital asset.
At the beginning of May, the daily number of transactions in Bitcoin network renewed its historical maximum at 685 thousand. This happened amid a surge of activity associated with the issue of bitcoin-NFT or Ordinals.
The ability to issue tokens on the Bitcoin network appeared in late January. And since then more than 4.69 million of them were created. More than 789 BTC ($21.9 million) were spent as commissions.
As of May 8, there are still more than 455,000 transactions waiting to be confirmed in the first cryptocurrency blockchain. Which is a record high. Experts told what the formation of such a queue could lead to.
Reasons and solutions
Queuing is a fairly typical situation for PoW blockchains. And many factors can affect it, but the main reason is always associated with a sharp increase in interest in intra-network transfers.
Our experts say that the problem develops further very quickly. As the queue generates an even bigger queue, similar to the traffic jams that form from traffic jams when people try to avoid them. In blockchains, users start to raise fees. And all new transactions get stuck, while old ones may stay in the mempool (transaction queue, mempool) for weeks until the load is reduced.
There is no direct solution to this situation, says our expert. In general, the “scalability problem” is the main reason to criticize the consensus mechanism Proof-of-Work (PoW), on which Bitcoin works. But our expert noted that there are local ways around this problem. For example, such as “replace-by-fee” or “child-pays-for-parent” mechanisms.
“Replace-by-fee” allows you to directly change the amount of commission in a transaction already sent to the waiting list. But very few wallets support this feature. And to enable it, it should have been provided for in advance: the transaction should have been sent with the parameter enabled. Which allows you to replace the commission already after the transaction has been sent.
The “child-pays-for-parent” function implies sending a new transaction from a wallet. To which the change from the previous transaction with the knowingly overrated commission must come. This is such that it would be profitable for miners to process two transactions at once.
The problem of scalability is partially solved by the use of L2 solutions. For example, there is a Lightning Network superstructure for Bitcoin, which does not load the main blockchain. The widespread implementation of this technology will help prevent queues in the future.
Impact on Bitcoin price
The current significant queue in the BTC network is unlikely to affect the value of the asset in the moment. But it does create a number of questions for what is happening around the Bitcoin blockchain.
If before the BTC network seemed to market participants something fundamental, stable, which is very difficult to change. And, as a consequence, difficult to deteriorate in its parameters. After the emergence of projects like Ordinals, Bitcoin no longer seems to be a cryptocurrency ” constant.
The fact that thousands of enthusiasts in the Bitcoin network can now create NFT using the experimental script BRC-20. This expands the capabilities of the project, but creates no additional value for BTC. Our expert noted that the Bitcoin blockchain has never been known for scaling as it is. And in times of stress and strong movements of the cryptocurrency market, transactions in the network, compared to other blockchains, were very slow at all.
Now, against the backdrop of a growing number of transactions. And at the moment the number of transactions “in the queue” exceeded 400 thousand, the network’s fees have also increased, which adds to the negativity.
Thus, over time, the perception of Bitcoin as the first asset of the market may shift towards other projects. Which will offer reliable, fast and profitable transactions. Thus, the events of today may lead to a decrease in interest and capitalization of BTC in the long run.
However, there is no clear competitor at the moment. Therefore, market participants will continue to use Bitcoin. Current price movements are unlikely to be affected by these processes. But in the long term, such an “evolution” of the Bitcoin network raises questions.
Our experts have analyzed the situation on crypto market. And told how it can change for Bitcoin in the short term
Last week started not the best for Bitcoin. When against the background of weak Chinese statistics and the fall of the S&P500 index, the pair BTC/USDt fell to $27,666. It seemed that the situation would only worsen, but since May 2, the phase of recovery began thanks to the fall of the dollar index. And support from the U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Bitcoin has risen to $28,879.
However, there are still dangers to the U.S. economy. If Congress does not approve an increase in the national debt ceiling, the government will not be able to borrow additional funds. And it could find itself in a very difficult position. Since 1980, the U.S. government has shut down several times due to the inability to raise the national debt ceiling. Including closures in 1990, 1995-1996, 2013 and 2018-2019. Democrats and Republicans aren’t particularly worried about this.
After the publication of data on the labor market in the United States on May 4, the pair BTC/USDt rose to $29,677. However, investors remain generally quiet as buying activity in the cryptocurrency remained low.
The scenario of continuation of sideways movement on cyclic analysis is still confirmed. The beginning of a new rally on it falls on June 1.
According to BitRiver estimates, buyers have to fight for the level of $31,000. They need to pass it to make the price pattern on the daily timeframe “bullish”. Otherwise, the scales will start tipping to the sellers’ side.
