Hashrate-Shipment Coefficient Update: January 2024
In December, Bitcoin’s monthly average hashrate reached 507 EH/s, surpassing the 500 EH/s milestone for the first time. This figure came close to our initial estimate of 511 EH/s at the month’s outset.
However, contrary to our expectation, the benchmark for bitcoin’s daily production did not drop below 2 BTC/EH/s in December. This unexpected outcome was primarily due to a resurgence in inscription activities, propelling transaction fees to unprecedented levels. Consequently, Bitcoin’s mining revenue surged to $1.5 billion last month, marking the highest recorded since November 2021.
On the shipment side, the volume of bitcoin miners imported to the U.S. remained stagnant in December at 430 metric tons in gross weight, possibly owing to the holiday season.
Yet, a notable trend in Q4 was the increasing volume of more powerful equipment compared to earlier this year, such as S19 Pro Hydro and S19XP Hydro. Meanwhile, MicroBT’s partner, Synos Corp, continued importing 145 metric tons of computer parts in December, likely fulfilling Riot’s WhatsMiner preorders.
To further refine our dataset, we have adjusted the hashrate projection model to account not only for gross weight but also for the estimated arrival of bitcoin hashrate.
This updated dataset reveals a coefficient of 0.91 between the estimated U.S. import of hashrate and bitcoin’s total hashrate growth. Interestingly, the model predicts an average of 553 EH/s for January, indicating major difficulty jumps in the weeks ahead.
According to the updated model, bitcoin’s average hashrate capacity should have exceeded the 500 EH/s mark as early as October. However, miner operators have been playing catch-up, delaying this milestone. Nevertheless, it appears the momentum in hashrate growth will sustain in January, evidenced by the 3-day moving average so far, which has reached 540 EH/s already.
Another notable development in December was the import of 1.2 EH/s of Antminer S19 Pro Hydro by DDH North America, the operating entity of Genesis Digital Assets (GDA) in the U.S. This accounted for 27% of all the hashrate that GDA imported to the U.S. in 2023.
Since GDA is a private entity, it does not disclose production updates as regularly as public mining companies. However, the shipment data we have compiled since March 2022 positions GDA as a major competitor to publicly traded mining companies in North America.
In October 2021, GDA boasted an operating hashrate of 3.8 EH/s. Since March 2022, the company has imported about 1,250 metric tons of Antminers and Avalon miners. We estimate the hashrate powered by those shipments to total 7.2 EH/s.
That means GDA likely has a proprietary hashrate capacity of at least 11 EH/s, assuming it did not retire any equipment. It will be interesting to see if GDA plans to file to go public as the market turns opportunistic in 2024.
