Bitcoin's rally in the past six months will help cushion crypto miners from the effects of the 50% cut in their earned rewards, the report said.

•Miners are better positioned for this halving due to the large gains in bitcoin in the last six months, the report said.
•If history repeats itself, bitcoin will enjoy a strong rally after the event, the broker said.
•A potential increase in network fees could offset the impact of reduced rewards, Benchmark noted.

Crypto miners are the group most affected by bitcoin's (BTC) reward halving, and they are better positioned this time round due to the cryptocurrency's gains in the past six months, broker Benchmark said in a research report on Thursday.

The largest cryptocurrency by market value rallied about 140% in the past two quarters, while ether (ETH), the second-largest, added 85%, CoinDesk Indices data show. The CoinDesk 20 Index, a measure of the broader crypto market, gained 115%.

The quadrennial event slows the rate of growth in bitcoin supply by 50% and is expected to occur late this evening or early tomorrow UTC.

Benchmark cited Haris Basit, the chief strategy officer of bitcoin miner Bitdeer Technologies (BTDR), who said the recent increase in the price of BTC could bail out many of the Bitcoin network’s less-efficient miners in the near-term.

Given bitcoin’s recent outperformance, the “role of the halving in driving the retirement of inefficient mining rigs and reducing the network hashrate would be much less dramatic than it would have been absent the rally,” Basit said at a Benchmark-hosted event.