Bitcoin miner revenue surges to pre-halving levels, and the US authorities seize $1 billion in bitcoins
Bitcoin miner revenue surges to pre-halving levels
As the Bitcoin price is reaching the highest levels since January 2018, Bitcoin mining is getting more profitable thanks to a number of factors.
According to data from Blockchain.com, BTC miners revenue has surged to levels not seen since Bitcoin’s third halving in May 2020
As such, BTC miners’ revenue hit $20.8 million on November, 4. According to Blockchain.com, it is the highest point recorded since September 2019, when miners’ block reward was twice as much as now.
A spike in BTC miner revenue levels is coming from Bitcoin price doubling since the May halving. On November 4, Bitcoin price reached a new 2020 high at $15,950, jumping more than 20% over the past seven days.
The jump is also due to the simultaneous rise in Bitcoin transactions’ fees. As reported by Cointelegraph, Bitcoin transaction fees surged nearly 200% in late October. As such, the percentage of BTC miner revenue from fees has significantly increased, accounting for $4.15 million or roughly 20% of total miner revenue.
Amid parabolic growth in revenues, some miners are likely to start cashing out at this point and sell their coins. Another opinion is that they will be cautious waiting for the future growth of BTC.
US authorities seize $1 billion in bitcoins
The US Department of Justice said it had seized 69,370 BTC linked to the Silk Road darknet market on Tuesday.
In addition, government officials received equivalent amounts in bitcoin forks: Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold and Bitcoin SV. The department emphasized that this is the largest seizure of cryptocurrency in the United States of all time.
It follows from the case documents that in April 2013, a hacker under the nickname Individual X hacked into Silk Road and stole the indicated amount. On Tuesday, November 3, he agreed to hand over the cryptocurrency to the authorities. Silk Road existed from 2011 until in 2013 law enforcement officers arrested the owner of the platform and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
USDT stablecoin capitalization exceeds $17 billion
The market capitalization of the Tether cryptocurrency reached $17.14 billion, which is an all-time high.
At the beginning of the year, the figure was $4.1 billion and since then has more than quadrupled, and over the past three months, the indicator has surged by $7 billion. According to the CEO of the CryptoQuant service, Ki Young-Ju, this led to the recent rise in the price of bitcoin:
“Again, the BTC price soared right after the number of stable coin deposits increased”, he tweeted.
