Bitcoin
Bitcoin Mining Profitability Surges in June as Market Adjusts for Halving: Jefferies
Bitcoin (BTC) Mining was more profitable in June than in May as the cryptocurrency’s price rose 2% and the network’s hash rate fell 5%, and the market adjusted to the effects of the halving, investment bank Jefferies said in a research report on Monday.
“June was a month of modest recovery from the immediate impacts of the halving, which were most pronounced in May,” wrote analyst Jonathan Petersen.
Hash rate refers to the total combined computing power used to mine and process transactions on a proof of work blockchain and is a proxy for industry competition and mining difficulty. The quadrennial half rewardwhich occurred in April, slowed the rate of growth in bitcoin supply as miner rewards were cut by 50%.
Jefferies cut its price target on Marathon Digital (MARA) with a hold rating to $22 from $24. The bank also lowered its price target on Argo Blockchain ADRs (ARBK) to $1.20 from $1.50 and on the UK-listed shares (ARB) to 9.5p (12 cents) from 11.90p. It maintained its hold rating on the company. One ADR is equivalent to 10 shares.
The bank noted that several bitcoin miners have moved into high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) hosting to diversify their revenues and capitalize on the growing demand for AI infrastructure and cloud computing.
“This strategic shift was driven by the declining profitability of bitcoin mining, particularly following the recent halving events,” Petersen wrote.
U.S.-listed mining companies produced a larger share of new bitcoins in June than in May, the bank said, rising to 20.8% of the total network from 19.1% the previous month, as they brought in new capacity and the network’s hash rate fell.
Marathon mined the most bitcoins in June, 590, although that was 4% less than in May. CleanSpark (CLSK) mined 445 tokens, up 7%, the report said. Marathon’s installed hashrate remained the highest among U.S.-listed miners at 31.5 exahashes per second (EH/s), with Riot Platforms (RIOT) in second at 22 EH/s, the report added.