Bitcoin (BTC) miners decreased their coin inventory before the halving event last April 20. This trend might soon increase as the blockchain’s reduced usage costs impact miners’ revenue. 

Analyst Kaiko’s weekly note titled “Reality Bites for Miners” states that the daily average network fees surged after the halving, providing relief for Bitcoin miners. However, fees have since dropped as the initial surge of users to the Runes protocol has subsided. In addition, the recent drop in fees could result in increased selling pressure from miners.

Bitcoin’s price is already under downside pressure due to the upcoming $9 billion payout to creditors of Mt. Gox. A potential increase in selling pressure from miners could exacerbate the situation.

Bitcoin miners generate revenue from two sources: block rewards and transaction fees. They receive a fixed amount of BTC for adding new blocks to the blockchain, as well as transaction fees for including transactions in the blocks they mine. 

Last month’s halving event reduced the per-block coin emission from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. This shift placed the responsibility of offsetting the negative impact on miner profitability on transaction fees and the price of bitcoin. 

Initially, the average transaction fee surged from 0.0003 BTC to a six-year high of 0.00199 BTC immediately after the halving, as per data from Glassnode. This surge occurred as traders hurried to “etch” and mint tokens on the Bitcoin blockchain using the fungible token protocol Runes. 

However, the excitement generated by Runes was short-lived, and the average fee quickly returned to levels observed before the halving. As of yesterday, the mean transaction fee stood at 0.000039 BTC.