The “war on miners” isn’t one battle—it’s a rolling set of economic squeezes (halvings and difficulty), political pushes (energy rules and taxes), and protocol fights (what counts as “spam” in blockspace). Here’s a 2025 reality check on whether peace is coming—or whether conflict is built into crypto’s design.
- Economics: The April 2024 Bitcoin halving cut issuance to 3.125 BTC/block; fees briefly hit records around the halving/Runes launch, then cooled, pressuring cash flow again.
- Policy: US agencies paused an emergency mining power-use survey after a court challenge; the White House again floated a 30% electricity excise tax on mining. New York advanced its moratorium review with a formal environmental impact statement in May 2025.
- Protocol culture wars: Some Bitcoin developers pushed to curb Ordinals/inscriptions; miners liked the fee spikes. Proposals to filter inscriptions failed to win consensus.
- Migration away from miners elsewhere: Ethereum removed miners altogether at The Merge in 2022 and burns base fees under EIP-1559—an explicit shift away from miner economics.
- A possible truce: Tech like Stratum V2 and OCEAN’s DATUM aim to give individual miners transaction-selection power, reducing pool-level censorship risk and aligning incentives.
1) The economic front: halving math, fees, and hashprice
Bitcoin’s 4th halving (April 19–20, 2024) cut block rewards to 3.125 BTC, making miners more reliant on transaction fees. The day after the halving saw the largest USD miner-fee take ever, driven by the Runes token launch; but the fee bonanza faded within days.
By mid-2025, industry data shows hashprice (revenue per TH/s) depressed by rising difficulty and subdued fees, forcing miners to lean on efficiency, hedging, and power strategies. Luxor’s July 2025 lookback notes fixed or upfront hashrate payouts insulated some miners from the decline.
Fee share trends underscore the squeeze: Coin Metrics reported miners’ Q1 2025 fees as a low single-digit percent of revenue (≈1–2%), after the halving spike washed out—leaving issuance (now smaller) and price as the key supports.
2) The policy & power-grid front: surveys, taxes, moratoria—and Texas
In the US, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) tried an emergency survey on miners’ electricity use in early 2024 but withdrew it under a court settlement, agreeing to destroy collected data and pursue a normal rulemaking path.
The FY2025 Green Book again proposed a 30% excise tax on electricity used in digital-asset mining (phased 10%→20%→30%). It’s a proposal, not law—but signals persistent political pressure.
New York’s 2022 PoW moratorium (targeting fossil “behind-the-meter” expansions) moved into the analysis phase: the state published its GEIS on crypto-mining impacts in May 2025. Courts have also scrutinized permit denials, as seen in a 2024 decision involving Greenidge Generation.
Meanwhile in Texas, the symbiosis with ERCOT is under the microscope. Miners like Riot earned sizable curtailment credits by powering down during peak demand, drawing praise for grid flexibility and criticism over incentives.
3) The protocol front: are devs and miners fighting over blockspace?
Ordinals/BRC-20/Runes injected speculative demand into Bitcoin’s blockspace. Some Core contributors called inscriptions “spam” and proposed filtering; others rejected changes that would block valid fee-paying transactions. Miners benefited from the fee spikes; developer consensus to exclude them did not materialize.
On Ethereum, the “war” ended differently: miners were retired at The Merge (Sept 15, 2022); under EIP-1559, the base fee is burned rather than paid to block producers, structurally reducing the role miners used to play in Ethereum’s fee economy.
4) Energy, sustainability, and public perception
The Cambridge CBECI remains a primary reference for Bitcoin’s electricity demand; its dashboard and comparison pages contextualize consumption against other sectors. A 2025 Cambridge note reported sustainable energy share rising above 50% for mining, though methods and estimates vary across studies. Always cite your baseline.
Public debate is ongoing: Wired chronicles community-level pushback in Texas, while agencies like EIA estimate US crypto mining at ~0.6%–2.3% of national electricity use. Expect continued calls for transparency, particularly in fast-growing regions.
5) Is peace possible? Three “truce” paths miners are pursuing
A) Better incentives & risk management
Miners hedge revenue via hashrate forwards and lock-in power economics, buffering hashprice drawdowns. Post-halving reports emphasize contracting and efficiency as survival tools.
B) Grid services, not just block rewards
Demand-response participation (e.g., ERCOT’s programs) creates non-mining revenue and paints miners as flexible loads—useful during stress events. The optics remain contested, but the model is real.
C) Stratum V2 & miner-level transaction selection
Upgrading from Stratum V1 to Stratum V2 (and experiments like OCEAN’s DATUM) lets individual miners, not pools, pick transactions, reducing censorship risk and aligning miners with Bitcoin’s neutrality ethic. New pools launched in 2025 with SV2-first designs.
6) Will the “war on miners” ever end?
Short answer: not entirely.
- Design tension is permanent. Bitcoin keeps proof-of-work by design; every halving reduces subsidy and reopens the “can fees carry the security budget?” debate—especially when fee share drifts back to low single digits. These cycles will continue.
- Policy oscillates. Even when emergency actions are withdrawn, new proposals (taxes, reporting, local siting rules) keep coming. Expect recurring regulatory flare-ups, not a final settlement.
- Cultural fights recur. As long as users can deploy new protocols that compete for blockspace (Ordinals, Runes, others), miners will generally take the fees, while parts of the dev community debate norms. Attempts to “end” that tension usually stall on Bitcoin’s rough consensus.
What can end is the worst of the conflict: wider SV2 adoption, clearer energy disclosures, and diversified revenue stacks (hedging + grid services) can lower the temperature—even if they don’t remove the structural push-and-pull that defines crypto’s relationship with miners.
Practical checklist for readers (2025)
- Track hashprice and fees before making CapEx decisions. (Luxor’s indices are the industry standard.)
- Budget for policy scenarios: power-use reporting, excise-tax risk, and local siting rules.
- Favor pools/protocols with SV2/transaction-selection support to reduce censorship and align incentives.
- If operating in power-sensitive regions, build a demand-response playbook early.
FAQs
Didn’t the halving fix miner economics via higher fees?
Not sustainably. Fees spiked around the halving and the Runes launch, then fell; by Q1 2025, fee share of miner revenue returned to ~1–2%. Plan for cyclical fee demand, not a permanent windfall.
Is the US still collecting emergency power-use data from miners?
No—the EIA withdrew its emergency survey in March 2024 after a legal challenge, agreeing to destroy collected data and pursue a standard process.
Does Ethereum still have miners?
No. Ethereum deprecated mining at The Merge (Sept 15, 2022) and burns the base fee under EIP-1559; block production is by validators staking ETH.
What’s the most credible way to cite mining energy use?
Use Cambridge CBECI for baseline estimates and methodology notes; when discussing US share, cite EIA’s 0.6%–2.3% range.
