In 2024, the Bitcoin mining industry recorded significant achievements and historical milestones. According to a report from Bitcoin mining companies NiceHash and Digital Mining, 2024 was a record-breaking year for the industry.

NiceHash and Digital Mining showed that in 2024, the mining industry saw high demand for block space, increased hashrate, and new trends in mining machine models. Large mining companies also expanded through mergers and acquisitions, increasing their productivity and efficiency.

Mining Industry Development in 2024

In 2024, the Bitcoin network started at block 823,807 and ended at block 877,270, creating 53,463 blocks with an average block time of 9 minutes and 83 seconds. By the fourth Bitcoin halving, which reduced the miner reward from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 per block, about 93.75% of all Bitcoin had been mined.

Bitcoin miner ViaBTC mined a halving block that recorded its highest fees since May 2021: 37,626 BTC in transaction fees. More than a month before the halving, Marathon Digital mined the largest Bitcoin block in history at 3,990.36 kilobytes. Notably, the first 100 blocks after the last halving averaged 11.19 BTC in fees.

While the halving has made 2024 a tough year for miners, these organizations still added record hashrate to the Bitcoin network. The year started with a hashrate of 515 EH/s and ended with 807 EH/s after reaching an all-time high of 808 EH/s. This represented a 56.7% increase in hashrate or 292 EH/s.

Moreover, the halving caused Bitcoin’s hashrate to drop to an all-time low, and the network difficulty was adjusted 26 times.

Mining Predictions for 2025

The United States retained its dominant position among the leading regions in the mining industry. However, NiceHash and Digital Mining believe that Africa and South America are emerging regions as miners make use of their underutilized energy resources.

There has also been a noticeable shift among Bitcoin miners, with many switching to a Bitcoin (BTC) treasury strategy. Several miners have not only decided to hold on to the coins they have mined, but have also taken steps to raise capital for additional purchases.

In addition, miners have expanded their capacity by upgrading their mining machines, making strategic acquisitions, and raising new capital through various means, including initial public offerings. In fact, the market cap of publicly traded mining stocks has surpassed $50 billion for the first time.

Interestingly, the halving has caused a decline in BTC production in 2024, but the higher BTC price has helped mitigate the impact of the production cut.

In the meantime, NiceHash and Digital Mining have outlined several predictions for the mining industry in 2025, including increased adoption of the Bitcoin treasury strategy, increased miner profitability, and the network hashrate exceeding 1 ZH.

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