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Bitcoin (BTC) started the week on a stable note, trading above $65,800, as transaction fees have significantly decreased following the recent halving event.
This reduction in fees is a stark contrast to the initial aftermath of the halving when medium-priority transactions spiked to over $146, and high-priority transactions reached $170.
According to on-chain data from Mempool.Space, medium-priority transactions are now costing $8.48, while high-priority transactions cost $9.32. This is a significant drop from the fees seen immediately after the halving.
The hashprice index, a metric created by Luxor to quantify how much a miner can expect to earn from a specific quantity of hashrate, has also experienced a decline. It has dropped from $182.98 per hash/day to $81, which is below the pre-halving level.
Bitcoin miners had anticipated that the halving would significantly impact their revenue. To counteract this, the Runes protocol, designed by Casey Rodarmor to create fungible tokens on Bitcoin, went live at the time of the halving. The protocol was expected to generate significant on-chain activity, potentially offsetting the revenue loss for miners.
However, in the days following the halving, the floor prices for the runestone NFT collection have dropped by nearly 50% in the last 24 hours, with a floor price of around 0.037 BTC, according to Magic Eden. On the other hand, ordinal collections like Bitcoin Pullets and NodeMonkes have seen increases of 11% and 8%, respectively, as per CoinGecko data.
It is important to note that while these ordinal collections generate considerable transaction fees, they do not appear to be the same level of revenue source that many had hoped the Runes protocol would be for miners.
The development follows crypto miners stockpiling near-record amounts of Bitcoin, hoping the token will rise in value and offset a drop in new supply that will cut the rewards for verifying transactions in half. The Bitcoin mining industry was also in the spotlight in mid-March, when President Joe Biden’s proposed 30% tax on crypto mining power faced criticism for potentially harming the industry and erasing investor wealth.
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Stellar Blade’s rating by Japan’s Computer Entertainment Rating Organization has drawn pushback from an Electronic Arts executive with implications that publisher’s game, Dead Space’s 2023 remake, faced an unfair double standard.
The criticism comes as Stellar Blade known for its stylish presentation, violence, and a provocatively dressed female protagonist, cleared CERO rating without losing any content to censors.
Fans anticipating the PlayStation exclusive action adventure had been concerned Stellar Blade’s presentation would be controversial enough that the ratings board would demand changes. Not so. Stellar Blade was given a CERO D rating, the second strictest in that country, which permits anyone age 17 or over to buy the game.
But Dead Space’s remake was not even given a rating when it was reviewed last year, meaning that game is unavailable for sale, at least officially.
Japan’s ratings board can seriously alter a publisher’s sales plans
Shaun Noguchi, Electronic Arts’ general manager for Japan, took to X to complain their game got comparatively heavy handed treatment for having roughly the same level of violent content.
“The Stellar Blade demo was really fun and absolutely action packed,” Noguchi said on Sunday, according to a translation. “However, CERO, you denied our Dead Space a rating because it included cross-sections of severed body parts and internal organs, but here we have both cross-sections and insides on display [in Stellar Blade] passed off with a CERO D rating. I find this hard to accept.”
Dead Space, first published in 2008, is a sci-fi survival horror game in which the player protagonist does battle with hideous space monsters, using a laser cutting tool in some cases to dismember his foes before they can attack. The game is rated M (17 and older only) according to North America’s Entertainment Software Ratings Board, and PEGI-18 by Europe’s Pan European Game Information.
Stellar Blade is published by Sony Interactive Entertainment and developed by South Korea-based Shift Up, which went on social media over the weekend to say the game had passed review in all territories with no censorship. The PlayStation 5 exclusive launches on April 26.
A recent demo of the game released in March posted some surprisingly strong playership numbers, even rivaling Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s demo performance and suggesting PlayStation has a big hit on its hands.
Featured image via EA Motive
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