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Bitcoin is ending the month up 45%—but three crypto stocks did even better over the same period. It's not the case for all crypto stocks, but Coinbase (COIN), Bitcoin miners Marathon Digital (MARA) and CleanSpark (CLSK), and software company MicroStrategy (MSTR) had an especially good February.
COIN has gained 56%, MARA gained 75%, and MSTR has nearly doubled to deliver 92% gains since the start of February. But CLSK beat them all, posting a staggering 125% increase over the past month.
Coinbase reported strong Q4 earnings this month, beating analysts estimates and seeing its stock jump 11% after the good news. Its $273 million worth of profits was a dramatic turnaround for the company.
During the same period in 2022, the San Francisco-based company reported a loss of $557 million. And in Q3 2023, the exchange reported that its profits dipped by $2 million.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin miner Marathon Digital filed its annual report yesterday. The company recorded a 229% increase in revenue to $387.5 million. Publicly traded mining stocks have been a popular stock among traders, especially those who want to diversify their exposure to the asset ahead of the Bitcoin halving.
CleanSpark has done its own pre-halving homework. Earlier this month, the company signed deals to buy three new Bitcoin mining facilities in Mississippi for $20 million and spent another $7 million to buy another site in Georgia. When all of the its new acquisitions are online, CLSK will see its mining capacity doubled.
The Bitcoin halving, a regularly-scheduled event that takes place roughly every four years, will reduce the reward paid to Bitcoin miners for processing transactions on the network by 50%. Around mid-April, the reward will go from 6.25 to 3.125 BTC. It sounds like bad news for miners, but most large-scale companies—like Marathon—have spent the past year buying more rigs. And it's usually the case that when the halving reduces the rate at which new BTC is issued, the price experiences a rally.
And MicroStrategy, perhaps the most laser-eyed of the aforementioned companies, has gotten close to joining the S&P 500 and bought more BTC in February. Its Bitcoin treasury has now swelled to $10.3 billion, according to a recent SEC filing.
Keep in mind, though, this comparison relies on doing a side-by-side of a really good month for Bitcoin to an even better month from three crypto stocks. And it's fair to say that COIN, MARA, and MSTR were helped along because of their proximity to the world's oldest and largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
At its peak on Wednesday, Bitcoin was only about 12% away from its all-time high price of $69,044, which it last saw on November 10, 2021. A bout of volatility caused Bitcoin's price to crash suddenly, but it's since recovered, with Bitcoin currently trading for around $63,000, according to CoinGecko data.
There are other signs that things are on the up for Bitcoin. It saw $788 billion worth of BTC traded in February. Monthly volume has been on a steady increase since October, when markets really seized on the hype around a potential SEC approval of Bitcoin ETFs. That's the month when total trading volume surpassed $400 billion for the first time since April 2023.
Edited by Stephen Graves