You have to admit, we all did have that thought creep into the back of our heads last week with the Runes fee pump: Is this it? Is this finally the new paradigm? The Bitcoin network experienced it’s first post-halving upward difficulty adjustment last week as fees soared from Runes Mania and the network saw the longest streak of fee-heavy blocks in it’s history. So even the most grizzled mining veteran (We see you, OGBTC) had to be asking if this was finally the fee-subsidy flippening.
The answer is a resounding “No!” Let’s do a post-mortem.
![](https://blockspace.media/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/image-15-1024x645.png)
Overall, miners collected a bit over 1,200 BTC, or $80 million+ from the post-halving Runes Mania fees. In the ~320 blocks immediately following the halving, we saw mining profitability skyrocket upwards by 80% from $104/Ph/d to $182/Ph/d. (Hashprice is is a measure of miner profitability).
![](https://blockspace.media/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/image-16-1024x643.png)
But what goes up must come down (and in crypto it goes down fast).
Within 50 hours of the halving, miners were already even with the month’s hashprice lows of $74/Ph/d, and within 96 hours (after a sucker’s hashprice rally) they plummeted to all time lows of $58/Ph/d and have since continued to decline unrelentingly.
![](https://blockspace.media/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/image-17-1024x650.png)
Currently, the hashprice is sitting right at $50/Ph/day and teetering on the edge threatening to dip into the 40s 😱
At least there’s 1 good reason to keep those rigs online 🙂
![](https://blockspace.media/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/image-18.png)