Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin fundamentals remain unchanged despite the significant events in 2022

Hull Invest

2022 marked the beginning of a new crypto winter, with major crypto companies collapsing and the prices of digital currencies, including Bitcoin, plummeting.

Additionally, rising interest rates and a general economic downturn are making investors uneasy.

Despite all this, Bitcoin fundamentals remain strong. Let’s take a look at some of the Bitcoin indicators for 2022.

Bitcoin circulation supply

Currently, the circulating supply of Bitcoin is 19,257,175, 91.7% of the maximum limited supply of 21 million coins. Currently, there are 1,742,825 mining left before reaching the 21 million bitcoin limit.

On average, one Bitcoin block is created every 10 minutes, so the supply of Bitcoin is increasing approximately every 10 minutes.

Change in Bitcoin block times over a year (Source: BitInfoCharts)

However, despite severe market downturns such as miner surrenders, forced liquidations, and defi platform hacks, Bitcoin has maintained a near-consistent 10-minute block time in 2022.

Bitcoin miner block reward

Bitcoin block rewards consist of two components: newly minted coins and transaction fees. Miners are rewarded for successfully validating blocks on the network.

The number of newly minted coins is regulated by a halving event that occurs roughly every four years. The Bitcoin halving event aims to cut the supply of new Bitcoin in half and ensure that all 21 million Bitcoins have been mined.

Despite moving all BTC to a different address, newly generated bitcoins are now at 900/day in this halving, with a reward of $6.3 BTC for each block.

Changes in Miner Block Rewards Over the Past Years (Source: Bitcoin Visuals0)
Changes in Miner Block Rewards Over the Past Years (Source: Bitcoin Visuals0)

While block rewards are stable and predictable, transaction fees can fluctuate due to multiple factors such as network activity and transaction size.

Bitcoin’s average transaction fee was $0.834 on December 31, down 70.5% from last year’s high of 2.829.

Changes in trading fees over the last year (source: ycharts)
Changes in trading fees over the last year (source: ycharts)

This decline is mainly due to increasing network difficulty, heavy computational demands, and poor market performance.

block height

The height of the block was 573.296k as of December 31st. Blocks created per day remained constant even though miner revenue hit a new low.

Block height and growth of blocks created per day (Source: Bitcoin Visuals)
Block height and growth of blocks created per day (Source: Bitcoin Visuals)

All blockchains consist of a series of consecutive blocks, the first of which is called the genesis block. The genesis block is assumed to be at block height zero. In principle, the total height of the blockchain is the height of the latest block.

Bitcoin still has over 99% uptime as block heights continue 99.987%.

Bitcoin mining difficulty

As of December 31, 2022, Bitcoin mining difficulty has reached 35.36 trillion, up from 24.27 trillion a year ago.

Bitcoin difficulty
Bitcoin difficulty

This number represents the amount of computing power applied to mine this particular cryptocurrency every 14 days based on the amount of hashpower competing for rewards on the network.

A higher mining difficulty indicates more miners are trying to acquire this cryptocurrency. Hash refers to the amount of processing power a PC uses to build a blockchain. The more blocks of verified transactions processed, the more Bitcoins are mined. Despite the volatile market and last month’s blizzard, mining difficulty has been adjusted every 2016 block.

Change in Bitcoin difficulty adjustment rate (Source: Glassnode)
Change in Bitcoin difficulty adjustment rate (Source: Glassnode)

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