Bitcoin 'hash price' slides to all-time low following fourth halving event

Bitcoin BTC +1.31% 's so-called hash price has dropped to fresh all-time lows following Bitcoin’s fourth halving on April 20, despite a brief jump in revenue attributed to the hype surrounding Runes etching and hash rate remaining at comparatively high levels.

Hash price is a term coined by Bitcoin mining services firm Luxor, referring to the expected value of 1 PH/s or 1 TH/s of hashing power per day. The metric quantifies how much a miner can expect to earn from a specific quantity of hash rate.

According to data from Hashrate Index, hash price fell below $50 per PH/s per day ($0.05 per TH/s per day) for the first time in its history today as bitcoin’s price fell below $63,000 following miners’ subsidy reward drop from 6.25 BTC per block to 3.125 BTC post-halving.

The Bitcoin hash price is now 10% lower than the previous record low of around $55 PH/s per day ($0.055 per TH/s per day) at the bottom of the bear market in November 2022, when bitcoin was trading for around $16,000.

Bitcoin hash price. Image: Hashrate Index.

Runes transaction fee windfall subsides

After halving block 840,000 generated $2.4 million in fees — far exceeding the approximate $200,000 worth of block subsidy reward — bitcoin went on a record 104-block run of transaction fee rewards higher than the subsidy, according to the Bitcoin explorer Mempool.

Much of that transaction fee activity can be attributed to the hype surrounding Runes — a new fungible token standard for Bitcoin developed by Ordinals creator Casey Rodarmor, offering a more efficient solution for etching (creating) tokens on Bitcoin, which was launched at the halving

Runes generated over $135 million in fees for miners during their first week, pushing up average transaction fees on the Bitcoin network and hash price to $182 per PH/s per day ($0.18 per TH/s per day) on April 21 — the highest in two years.

However, transaction fee rewards have since reduced considerably, with hash price subsequently falling to its fresh all-time low in the early hours of Monday morning.

The impact of the drop in hash price on hash rate (the total computational power dedicated to the network by miners) remains to be seen, with the seven-day moving average currently holding steady at around 640 EH/s, according to The Block’s data dashboard.

However, the slowing rate of block production since Bitcoin’s last difficulty adjustment on April 24, with an average block time currently above the 10-minute target interval, could be indicative of a declining network hash rate.

Public miners considerably built up their operations in the prior halving cycle, with Bernstein analysts Gautam Chhugani and Mahika Sapra saying earlier this month they expected the industry to further consolidate toward four leading public miners: CleanSpark, Marathon, Riot Platforms and Cipher Mining.