⚡ The Bitcoin mine is facing a silent crisis

Bitcoin miners are on the brink. While the price rises to $113k, the economic reality is brutal: they earn barely $43 per petahash daily in forwards, but spend $21-30 on energy. Margins are tightening.

The problem: The subsidy dropped to 3.125 BTC per block (halving 2024), so now they rely on transaction fees. But here comes the irony: when the network is quiet, the fees are miserable (~0.02 BTC/block = 0.6% of income). In peaks (Inscriptions, Runes), they can spike 300x, but that's not sustainable.

Raw numbers:

• Quiet day: 452.9 BTC total income (~$51M)
• Day with peaks: 1,170 BTC (~$132M)
• The difference = $72 in uplift of hashprice vs. $43 in forwards = broken marginal fleets

The million-dollar question: What explodes first?

1. Hashrate → Miners disconnect, security falls
2. UX → Cheap fees during congestion, happy users but Bitcoin less secure
3. Ideology → Mining is centralized in giant pools/AI hosting

Bitcoin Core v28 brings child-pays-for-parent (CPFP) and package relay so that wallets can pay fees dynamically, but that only fixes the flow, not the demand.

Bottom line: Miners need the fees to average 0.5 BTC/block ($59M/day) to survive with last-gen equipment. Today they are at 0.02. The next quarter will decide if the policy and wallets achieve it or if Bitcoin faces real security pressure.