It’s not just Bitcoin’s price taking a hit—Bitcoin mining companies in the U.S. are suffering too.
The aggregate market capitalization of 14 top U.S. public miners shed 22%—$6 billion—in February alone, analysts at JP Morgan wrote in their latest crypto report.
The companies the top investment bank tracks include Core Scientific, Greenidge, and MARA Holdings, among others.
JP Morgan’s report also noted revenue for the companies dipped, with analysts at the bank predicting Bitcoin miners earned $54,300 per EH/s on average in daily block reward revenue in February—down 5% from the month before.
Bitcoin Mining Is Now Harder Than Ever—16 Years After Satoshi Started It All
It’s Bitcoin’s birthday: The very first Bitcoin block was mined 16 years ago today. And the network is stronger than ever, with mining difficulty reaching a new all-time high mark as the biggest cryptocurrency rides into the new year. Data from Bitinfocharts shows that Bitcoin difficulty hit a new all-time high of 109.78 trillion hashes as of Monday—the highest ever seen for the original blockchain network. That means it takes that huge amount of hashes to mine a new block. Hashing is the com...
Bitcoin’s price has dipped 10% over the past 30 days and is currently trading at $87,300, according to CoinGecko data.
The asset dropped to as low as $78,940 on Friday, as investors sought a “risk-off” approach amid trade war tensions sparked by President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico.
Bitcoin is down nearly 20% from its all-time high of over $108,000—a level it touched the day crypto-friendly President Trump was inaugurated on January 20.
The performance of the world's largest crypto had helped lift revenue growth for Bitcoin miners, including MARA Holdings, in the fourth quarter of last year, though a declining price now places further strain on operations.
Mining operations, which require significant electricity consumption, face higher costs when Bitcoin prices drop, making it more expensive to sustain operations.
Investors, too, expected prices to continue surging, with hopes of a “Trump trade” spurring sentiment and pushing other digital assets to new all-time highs earlier in the year.
But a trade war with major world economies, including China, has forced investors to shed their positions with risk assets, including Bitcoin and equities.
MARA Holdings Reports Fewer Blocks Won, BTC Production Dips in February
MARA Holdings' blocks won and Bitcoin production—two major metrics of mining productivity—fell 6% on a month-to-month basis in February, the bitcoin miner said in a press release Tuesday. MARA attributed the declines to increased network difficulty and February's three fewer operational days than the previous month. MARA’s shares finished at $13.94, up 1.3% despite lingering in negative territory for a good part of the day. MARA is down nearly 21% over the past month, according to Yahoo Finance,...
Adding to those pressures, miners with high-performance computing exposure came under pressure following the late January launch of Deepseek, a Chinese AI model, JPMorgan wrote.
Some Bitcoin miners have repurposed their data centers to support the AI industry to capture tailwinds in AI development.
Still, the sector saw disruption in January after the Chinese startup unveiled its large language model developed with significantly less capital than U.S. firms such as OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google, weighing on Bitcoin miners diversifying into AI.
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair
