Any idea what caused the recent fee spike?
https://mempool.space/block/000000000000000000013412024e8979a0e0c8fb22aaa5fb7b099feedd1991f9Up to 280 sats/vB.
I'm afraid it's the users being torn a new a-hole, not miners... miners love high fees, especially with the halving being imminent.
Regarding halving, it's always the same discussion every 4 years.
Mining (in terms of purchasing power/USD valuation) becomes more and more profitable. It definitely is more profitable today compared to the 50 BTC era, there's no question about that.
Hashing competition means that older ASICs (higher nanometers) become less competitive. Lower-nanometer ASICs will remain competitive for the foreseeable future.
I don't worry about the miners' income. Even when the block subsidy will be a few sats in the far future, every transaction will cost a minimum of $1000 (in today's purchasing power, not when a Big Mac will cost $1000
).
The last halving went a bit unnoticed due to COVID craziness, but the same dynamics applied back then. BTC was worth 4 digits...
Some people will disagree, but the increasing hashrate/competition drives the BTC price higher as time goes by.
Why? Because miners are forced to spend more money on ASICs & electricity, therefore they must sell their BTC for a higher price.
There's a reason BTC was dirt cheap back in 2009-2010... it's because with low amounts of electricity and a CPU/GPU you could produce tons of bitcoins.
In 5 years from now the BTC network will probably have 10 times the hashrate compared to today, but it also won't fall below 6 digits.
Economics 101