Bitcoin miners, who are responsible for processing transactions and sending them to the blockchain, earned almost $700M in December, according to data provided by The Block Research.
Of the total $629.32M, $68.3M came from transaction fees, which users pay every time they send a transaction to the blockchain so that it can be processed as quickly as possible. Transactions that are accompanied by a higher commission are given priority on the network, as miners process them more quickly due to the fact that they receive a higher reward for processing them.
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Last month's revenue is the highest in 2020 and represents the largest amount of revenue generated during any given period since January 2018, shortly after the reference cryptocurrency reached its previous all-time high of $20,000. At that time, Bitcoin miners made $1B.
This increase in the miners' revenue coincides with the meteoric rise of Bitcoin, which in just a few weeks has risen from $19,000 to $34,000 and then dropped slightly to around $30,000.