Currently, Bitcoin is trading at $68,481.96, accumulating monthly gains of more than 46%, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
The popular cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (BTC), finally surpassed its former all-time high (ATH) price last week, topping $70,000, before retreating slightly.
It should be noted that the recent increase in the price of BTC has also caused the transaction volume of the popular Blockchain to skyrocket.
The Bitcoin halving is usually accompanied by a lot of turmoil for the cryptocurrency. As a result of the Bitcoin halving cycle, the supply of available Bitcoin decreases, increasing the value of Bitcoins that have not yet been mined. With these changes comes the opportunity to profit.
Last Week’s Average Bitcoin Transaction Volume
Over the past week, the seven-day moving average of transaction volume on the Bitcoin Blockchain reached its highest level since September 2022, 18 months ago, with $74.85 billion in operations.
This increased volume has also led to a corresponding increase in the income of Bitcoin miners. For reference, the seven-day moving average of miner revenue is currently at $65.4 million, just shy of its all-time high of $67.2 million reached in May 2021.
Even though the recent Bitcoin price rise has been primarily attributed to the success of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States, another upcoming event to watch is the Bitcoin network reward halving, better known as “Halving”.
This event consists of the reward for miners of the BTC network being reduced by half. Additionally, there is usually the halving, which is expected to occur in about 40 days, around April 19, is considered a bullish event for the price of the popular cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin Red Halving and Its Impact on Mining Difficulty
The difficulty of mining Bitcoin is not always the same. As more miners join the network, the more difficult it must be to mine to meet the stipulated emission. A person with very advanced mining equipment could solve a block very quickly and in less than 10 minutes. That’s why the network adjusts the difficulty.
As a crypto market benchmark, net flows into the 10 largest spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States reached $2.2 billion in the week ending March 1, of which more than $2 billion went to the BlackRock’s “iShares Bitcoin Trust” (IBIT.O), according to data from the London Stock Exchange Group.
Additionally, the recent optimism about Bitcoin has also spread to other popular cryptocurrencies such as “Ethereum” (ETH), with an increase of more than 60% since the beginning of the year.
On the other hand, in the middle of last month, Bitcoin also reached its highest mining difficulty level yet, reaching 81.7 billion. Notably, this figure shows us that in the last 12 months, the computational cost of mining a Bitcoin block has more than doubled.
The higher the difficulty, the more computing power and energy a crypto miner will need to find the right Hash for the new BTC block. For reference, the difficulty of the Bitcoin network has more than doubled in the last 12 months.
Currently, this difficulty has decreased, currently standing at 79.350 million with a Hashrate of 615.24 EH/s. Likewise, based on the data in Blockchain, in the next Halving event, the BTC network rewards will fall from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.
However, after the Halving of the Bitcoin network, the difficulty level could decrease as less efficient miners leave the network. This is because those miners with little power will not be able to operate their mining machines profitably, given the lower reward.
By Leonardo Perez
