Block 840,000 was mined by the ViaBTC mining pool, resulting in a reduction of the miners’ reward from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. Nonetheless, ViaBTC managed to generate substantial profits from transaction fees, as they will receive 40.7 BTC for each block mined, worth approximately $2.6 million at the current exchange rate.
The notable increase in transaction fees can be attributed to the Runes Protocol, developed by Casey Rodmarmor, the creators of Bitcoin Ordinals. This protocol was launched simultaneously with the halving, prompting numerous cryptocurrency enthusiasts to create their own “NFTs” at the early stages of the project.
The Runes Protocol functions as a counterpart to BRC-20 tokens. However, unlike Bitcoin Ordinals, where tokens are “written” into Bitcoin blocks, Runes Protocol utilizes the UTXO model to “seal” the tokens.
It is worth mentioning that subsequent blocks experienced significantly higher transaction fee volumes than usual, with the first five blocks collectively totaling $3.82 million.
Following the halving, the reduced block reward made it less profitable for older miners to remain connected to the network. As a result, some of them may have temporarily disconnected, potentially leading to a temporary decline in Bitcoin’s hashrate.
Previously, experts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) declared Bitcoin as the most popular instrument during times of financial instability.