Most older mining rigs will struggle to break even after Bitcoin block rewards halve in April, prompting miners to take them offline, says Galaxy Research.
As much as 20% of Bitcoin’s (BTC) current hash rate could go offline after the Bitcoin halving — which will see block rewards slashed in half and leave only the most efficient mining rigs standing.
At the end of 2023, over 70% of Bitcoin’s hash rate was churned out by eight ASIC miner models, Galaxy’s mining analysts said in a Feb. 14 report citing Coin Metrics data.
“Given how sensitive the breakevens are for the various ASIC models to Bitcoin price and transaction fees as a percent of rewards, we estimate that between 15 – 20% of network hash rate coming from the ASIC models […] could come offline,” the analysts wrote.
