Welcome to the NiceHash crypto news digest. Let's see what happened these last few days.

Bitcoin hashrate reaches a new all time high and miner revenues increase

A total of 4,498 blocks were mined in March, creating 28,112 new bitcoins. Bitcoin’s network hashrate has been around 341 exahash per second (EH/s) during the last 2,016 blocks or the last two weeks, and last week Bitcoin’s hashrate reached the 400 EH/s range, and on March 25, 2023, it hit an all-time high of 414.34 EH/s. With the hashrate so high and block intervals below the ten-minute average, difficulty is set to increase.

Bitcoin miners had a decent month in March with revenues not seen since before June 2022, and many operations are expanding. If you are a miner and looking to increase your revenue even more, you can sell your hashrate on our marketplace for a premium and earn 5 to 10% more than you would by mining alone. 

Satoshi turned 48 years old this week, a theory behind why this birth date was chosen

Just over 14 years ago, Satoshi Nakamoto registered with the P2P Foundation forum to share information about Bitcoin. According his page, the mysterious creator chose a birthday of April 5, 1975. If correct, he would be 48 years old this week. Many Bitcoiners believe that April 5 was chosen because it was the day U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt confiscated gold from Americans and banned its ownership.

Bitcoin supporters have been celebrating Nakamoto’s alleged birthday for years, and many continue to support the gold confiscation theory. Several theories attached to Nakamoto’s pseudonymous identity have emerged over the years, and it is widely assumed that Bitcoin’s creator left a number of secret Easter eggs in his messages.

At NiceHash, we also share a similar founding date, with our 9th Birthday this Saturday on April the 8th! Try mining a Bitcoin block to celebrate with our new TeamMining!

Bitcoin mining gets greener and greener

Bitcoin mining is the only major global industry whose major energy source is not a fossil fuel. A recent research by Daniel Batten demonstrates that Bitcoin mining is more eco fiendly than Electric Vehicle batteries.

Batten first referred to a report by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF), which pointed out that the major energy source was coal when not considering off-grid mining. However, that report did state that it did not factor in off-grid mining. He noted that, unlike EVs, Bitcoin mining is not 100% tethered to the grid, whereas EVs “will be bound by the sustainability of the grid it happens to be on.”

In this case, if EVs are distributed globally proportionally, the industry would “mirror global grid-mix and therefore to have coal as their major energy source (36.7%), followed by gas (23.5%).” The takeaway is that Bitcoin mining uses less coal - about 38% less.

With hydroelectric energy being Bitcoin’s major power source, and wind and solar growing fast, it’s clear that Bitcoin is becoming greener. “Fossil fuel sources have been decreasing at a combined 6.2% per year since January 2020”, he notes. This is in line with more recent reports, which have stated that sustainable energy now powers 52.6% of Bitcoin mining.

Apple has been shipping the Bitcoin Whitepaper to million of devices for years

New theories as to who Satoshi may see new speculation after it was discovered that the Bitcoin Whitepaper has been hiding in Mac OS systems for years. Entering this command into the Mac terminal will open up the Bitcoin Whitepaper:

open /System/Library/Image\ Capture/Devices/VirtualScanner.app/Contents/Resources/simpledoc.pdf

If you're running macOS 10.14 or later, the Bitcoin Whitepaper PDF should immediately open in Preview. It's not known why Apple would choose as a sample document Nakamoto's Bitcoin whitepaper. There has been widespread speculation about the identity of the presumed pseudonymous Bitcoin developer, which is only likely to add to the intrigue. What "Virtual Scanner II" refers to also remains unclear.

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