Bitcoin miners collectively earned $1.086 billion in May, marking the first time since January that the monthly total has crossed the $1 billion threshold, according to data reported by Bitcoin.com and relayed by ChainCatcher. Block subsidies accounted for $1.079 billion of that amount, with transaction fees playing only a negligible role.
Block subsidies dominate, fee income ticks up
Miners relied almost entirely on block rewards, with transaction fees contributing barely any revenue during the month. However, in the last 24 hours the fee-to-reward ratio has recovered from under 0.6% to around 1.16%, offering a thin cushion for miners grappling with suppressed fee income.
Hashrate decline and price weakness squeeze margins
The headline revenue figure masks mounting profitability pressure. Bitcoin’s price pullback has weighed on miner earnings, as total network hashrate fell from levels near 1,000 EH/s to below 975 EH/s. Consequently, daily revenue per petahash per second (PH/s) dropped 17.82% from $37.44 a month ago to $30.77. Block intervals stretched to 10 minutes and 49 seconds, a signal that has prompted the network’s difficulty to be projected for a roughly 7.5% reduction around June 13.
Should bitcoin prices fail to stabilize, the ongoing compression of per-unit hashrate revenue will remain the key headwind. While the anticipated difficulty adjustment may temporarily ease some pressure, whether it can reverse the trend of thinning margins remains to be seen.