Can Bitcoin Maintain its $48 Hashprice Amid Rising Difficulty and Falling Fees?

Key Points

• Bitcoin mining hashprice has stabilized at $48 despite rising difficulty and falling transaction fees.
• A projected 4.3% difficulty drop may provide short-term margin relief for miners.

Bitcoin’s mining hashprice has found stability at $48 per petahash per second (PH/s). This follows a 1.4% increase in difficulty to 113.76 trillion at block 889,081 on March 23.

The network’s hashrate fell below 800 EH/s, reversing a brief rise to 840 EH/s earlier in March. This is one of the metrics affecting miner profitability.

Price Recovery and Miner Profitability

On March 10, Bitcoin’s price dipped to $80,000, recovering to $85,172 by March 24. Despite this, the hashprice is still under the $50 threshold, which many miners depend on for sustainable operations.

Daily mining revenue reached $39.23 million, a slight increase from the $36.27 million low earlier in the month. However, revenue has declined 17% since December, when miners earned over $47 million daily.

Transaction fee income, another key revenue stream for miners, has also decreased. As of March 24, fees constituted only 1.12% of block rewards, the lowest share since January 2022.

Pressure on Miners

This pressure has led many operators to upgrade to more efficient machines. Older-generation machines like the Antminer S19 XP and S19 Pro now yield $0.088 and $0.067 per kilowatt-hour, which is lower than typical electricity rates in many regions. This puts thousands of units at risk of becoming unprofitable.

Meanwhile, newer models continue to perform well. Rigs like the Antminer S21 Hyd still deliver over $4.50 in daily earnings, offering more margin protection under current hashprice conditions. However, the rising difficulty complicates the situation.

Bitcoin’s protocol recalibrates difficulty every 2,016 blocks. The recent increase reflects past network activity, not the current slowdown. This timing gap has left miners grappling with rising difficulty as the hashrate falls.

Will Baxter, EVP at Braiins, confirmed that difficulty recently rose 5.6%, pushing the hashprice down to $0.054/TH/day. Public miners remain insulated by newer hardware and treasury holdings, while smaller miners using S19s are barely surviving.

Baxter estimates that about 50 EH/s of small and medium-sized mining capacity could shut down this year. However, he expects hashrate growth in 2025 as big box miners continue to expand.

Future Prospects

The next adjustment, projected for April 7, may decrease difficulty by 4.3% to 108.86 trillion. This forecast aligns with the current 10.45-minute average block time, which is longer than the target and signals a downward recalibration.

Institutional players with modern rigs and cheap power continue to operate. However, those with older hardware and higher costs are scaling back, as reflected in the falling hashrate.

Without a price rebound or an increase in transaction fees, the hashprice may remain under pressure. The upcoming difficulty adjustment will be crucial in shaping short-term margins, especially with the next halving expected within a year, which will further reduce block rewards.