Ethereum Mining Revenue Outperforms Bitcoin in Last Full Month of PoW Before Merge

Updated by Kyle Baird
In Brief
  • Ethereum mining revenue outpaced Bitcoin again in August.
  • BTC and ETH mining revenue saw year-over-year declines within the period.
  • ETH miners generated around $750 million while BTC miners saw $650 million in revenue.
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Ethereum mining revenue surpassed Bitcoin again in August as miners rushed to contribute power to the validation of proof-of-work (PoW) ETH transactions before it becomes a proof-of-stake (PoS) asset in September. 

Ethereum dominated headlines in August due to the upcoming Merge which will be completed before the end of September. The Merge will finally transition Ethereum to a PoS protocol which will scrap mining rewards for staking interest. 

As a result, ETH miners contributed power to the validation and verification of millions of transactions on the Ethereum network last month.

This eventually led to a 21% rise in revenue from $620.65 million in July to $756.11 million in August. 

Despite this, revenue was far below what miners generated within the same period last year. In August 2021, ETH mining revenue was in the region of $1.5 billion, and last month’s figure was a 50% decrease year-over-year. 

Bitcoin outpaced by Ethereum mining revenue again

Like Ethereum, Bitcoin miners saw a spike in revenue from July. There was a 9.9% increase from $597 million in July to $657 million in August. Several analysts believe BTC could have brought more revenue in August had there not been a spike in mining difficulty to a peak of 30.98 T during the month. 

The milestones reached by BTC in 2021 meant miners shared huge revenue of $1.41 billion in August of last year. This year’s value was a 53% dip year-over-year. 

Ethereum continues to be involved in more transactions than Bitcoin

Miners earn rewards by contributing power to the validation of transactions involving PoW coins. Throughout August, ETH was used in 34.9 million transactions.

Ethereum’s transaction count was more than four times that of Bitcoin. Much of this can be attributed to ETH being involved in multiple sectors like decentralized finance (DeFi), and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

In August 2022, ETH traded in a range of $1,424 and $2,030

For the sake of comparison, BTC was used in 7.81 million transactions during August.

The number of transactions involving BTC was four and a half times below that of ETH. With BTC shedding more than $60 billion of its market capitalization in August, miners made less.

During this time, BTC traded in a range between $19,509 and $25,200.

In 2022, ETH surpassed BTC in mining revenue for every month except June.

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