Bitcoin Mining Revenue Hits $20 Billion, Doubling in Two Years

Bitcoin miners have earned as much as they have in the past two years as they did in the first decade of Bitcoin’s existence.

The impressive factoid, pointed out by Rafael Schultze-Kraft, CTO of data metrics site Glassnode, draws on Glassnode’s data for cumulative Bitcoin miner revenue.

Cumulative revenue today hit $20 billion, meaning that it has doubled in the past two years, according to Glassnode. 

All this shows that Bitcoin miners are deriving more revenue than ever from securing Bitcoin’s network.

The pace picked up during this year’s bull run, which quadrupled the price of Bitcoin in under five months. Bitcoin started to rise in October, when it was about $10,500, to highs of just over $40,000 this month.

Bitcoin miners secure the blockchain by validating transactions by solving complicated math puzzles. 

It’s big business; these computers have to be state-of-the-art to make any money these days. 

Galaxy Digital, the crypto investment company, today announced it was getting into the mining biz. The New York-based company, founded in 2018, today launched Galaxy Digital Mining, “as a one-stop financial services platform for miners.”

In China, huge mining companies migrate every six months from the rainy part of the country, where they get cheap electricity, to the cold province of Xinjiang (coincidentally, the home of China’s internment camps) where mining companies save on cooling equipment. 

The founders of the largest Chinese mining companies, Bitmain, recently settled a spat that caused one of the founders to oust the other in a corporate coup d’état.

The downside of crypto mining is that it is terrible for our great mother, the Earth. Bitcoin mining uses a power consumption comparable to that of Chile, according to Digicomist, a site that tracks the energy consumption of Bitcoin miners.