Bitcoin Fees Spike And Crash Around ‘The Halving’ And Shiba Inu Raises $12M
Bitcoin fees are all the talk post-halving, and Shiba's new funding round turns heads in our weekly recap
By: Zack Guzman
April 22, 2024
GM! This Week: Bitcoin’s Halving led to a spike and crash in fees as miners attempt to get a sense of life moving forward with lower rewards, Grayscale throws in the towel and offers a new low-fee Bitcoin ETF, and the SEC seeks $4.2 billion from Terra for its record collapse.
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Bitcoin Halving Sparks Pro/Con for Miners
Bitcoin’s Halving – AKA when the reward for miners recording transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain get cut in half – finally happened on April 20. The event saw miner rewards cut from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC, and despite that, miners had their best-ever day in terms of dollar profits. A large part of that was due to Bitcoin fanatics paying up to get transactions included in the actual Bitcoin halving block. One user even paid more than $500,000 to be included in the historical block.
Per The Block:
“Bitcoin miners had been earning a total of around $60 to $70 million in daily subsidy and transaction fee rewards leading up to the halving. However, this spiked to $107.75 million on April 20, despite miners earning half the subsidy reward per block, according to Blockchain.com data. Around 75% of this ($80 million) came from transaction fees alone, per Glassnode data — both record highs.”
A good chunk of those fees are now coming from transactions in the form of Ordinals and Runes printed on the Bitcoin blockchain – but it’s unclear how long that demand keeps up. Demand already crashed a day after the halving, causing fees to come down as well. Nonetheless, Bitcoin Miner Hut 8 scored a “buy” rating from analysts at Benchmark. The stock was up 12% in trading Monday.
Bitcoin ETF War Finally Claims Grayscale’s Fee
For a long time Grayscale was the only player in the publicly traded Bitcoin game. Their GBTC Bitcoin Trust attracted billions of dollars. But since larger financial giants like Fidelity and BlackRock have opened access for investors in Bitcoin, GBTC has shed millions of dollars a day as people flee their 1.5% fee for cheaper alternatives.
Enter Grayscale’s Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF – a newly teased option Grayscale intends to offer fees of 0.15%. The option would let GBTC holders switch over without incurring a taxable event and could be huge to help Grayscale stop the losses. It’d also be the cheapest route to access BTC exposure (undercutting the 0.19% offered by the Franklin Templeton Bitcoin ETF.)
Shiba Inu Team Raises $12 Million
On the sidelines of Dubai’s Token2049 conference, Coinage’s Zack Guzman spoke with the lead developer of Shiba Inu — one of the most popular memecoin’s — as Shiba announced a $12 million funding round.
The round comes via a yet-to-be dropped $TREAT token, and will support new efforts to scale Shiba’s layer-2 blockchain by way of new partnerships. The round brought in support from Web3 giant Animoca Brands and others.
SEC Seeks $4.2 Billion From Terra For Fraud
As we reported over the weekend, the SEC is wasting no time in going after Terra for penalties after a jury found the company and Do Kwon liable for fraud in the largest-ever crypto collapse.
The SEC is seeking more than $4.2 billion in disgorgement from Terra, and an additional $100 million in additional penalties for Do Kwon. The Judge in the case has yet to make a final ruling, but Terra had already filed for bankruptcy protection.
Other Headlines Around Crypto
Watch our full news recap video with Thinking Crypto's Tony Edward above!
