BCH and BSV hashrate surges after BTC halving

Editor's note: This article comes from Cointelegraph Chinese (ID: CointelegraphChina), author: TURNER WRIGHT.

As Bitcoin’s hashrate has fallen since the May 11 halving, BCH and BSV’s hashrate has recovered after falling sharply following the April halving.

According to data from bitinfocharts, BCH's hashrate increased by more than 90% from 1.43 EH/s on May 10 to 2.74 EH/s on May 13. BSV's hashrate also increased from 1.1 EH/s to 1.78 EH/s.

BCH and BSV before halving and BTC after halving Source: bitinfocharts.com

Miners flee after halving

BCH and BSV saw a sharp drop in mining hashrate after their halvings on April 8 and April 10, respectively. BCH’s hashrate dropped by more than 80% in two days after the block reward dropped from 12.5 BCH to 6.25 BCH. BSV’s hashrate also dropped as miners shifted their hashrate to the BTC chain.

BTC hashrate rises as BCH and BSV halve Source: bitinfocharts.com

After the halving in April, BTC blocks are the most profitable blocks in the cryptocurrency mining business. Before the BTC halving this week, some predicted that less efficient miners would shut down their mining machines as revenues fell.

So far, BTC’s hashrate has dropped by 24%, from 137 EH/s to 104 EH/s, but it has not yet reached the levels of BCH and BSV after their halvings. BTC’s block times are also longer.

F2pool, which mined the last block before the Bitcoin halving and wrote the New York Times headline into this block, said that according to its data, Bitcoin's computing power has dropped from about 120 EH/s to 100 EH/s.

Miners Return to BCH and BSV Mining

Currently, the proportion of miners' income coming from BSV is very low. However, as of May 13, the total transaction volume of the BSV network has reached 88% of the total transaction volume on the Bitcoin chain and 54% of the total crypto transactions. Critics believe that these transactions are mainly recording data.

Miners like F2pool have noted that BSV is currently more profitable than BTC: “BTC mining revenue is slightly lower than BSV, but slightly higher than BCH.” However, it noted that “BCH and BSV mining revenues are generally very close to Bitcoin mining revenues.”

Miners also receive some income from transaction fees, which have been increasing for BTC, while those for BSV and BCH have barely been affected by the halving, remaining stable at $0.0002 and $0.002, respectively, since mid-April.

BSV representative Ed Pownall slammed Bitcoin’s transaction fees, telling Cointelegraph that BTC’s average transaction fee peaked at $3.19 before the halving, but “on May 11, Bitcoin processed a 1.2 Bitcoin transaction at block height 630001 for a fee of nearly $100.”

Bownal believes that these fees are not the result of new users adopting Bitcoin, but a form of price gouging or surge pricing: “It suggests that the BTC network has reached the limits it has imposed in terms of serving the community.”