Publicly traded crypto miners as a whole suffered a third consecutive month of declining daily revenue in September, coinciding with an increase in network difficulty that contributed to making conditions challenging.
Bitcoin network’s hash rate increased monthly over Q2, reaching 643 exahashes per second (EH/s) in September, a 2% rise from August, according to a report from JPMorgan. Meanwhile, miners saw their earnings per EH/s drop by 6% month-over-month to an average of $42,100. That happened even as the world's largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization gained about 7% in value in September, recovering much of its August slump, according to The Block's bitcoin price page.
With all that said, the total market capitalization of 14 U.S.-listed bitcoin miners tracked by JPMorgan rose 4% to $21 billion in September. Here’s a look at how some of the largest miners produced during the month.
MARA (formerly Marathon Digital Holdings) produced 705 bitcoin, a 6% increase from August. The company did not sell any of its bitcoin holdings, which now total 26,842 BTC.
“In September, the strength of our globally diversified operations was evident as we achieved significant uptime and increased our energized hash rate to 36.9 EH/s, reflecting 5% growth from August," said Fred Thiel, MARA's chairman and CEO. "We are proud to have surpassed a marathon worth of bitcoin HODL in September and currently have almost 27,000 BTC on our balance sheet."
Riot Platforms (ticker RIOT) mined 412 BTC, a 28% increase from August, and now holds 10,427 BTC. CEO Jason Les attributed the growth to operational improvements and hash rate increases, citing the completion of its third 100 MW building at the Corsicana Facility.
CleanSpark (CLSK) mined 493 BTC in September, bringing total holdings to 8,049 BTC. CEO Zach Bradford emphasized the company’s strategic positioning and resilience, noting that CleanSpark’s stock price had increased by 145% year-over-year by the end of the month.
"These results came from successfully navigating the halving, closing multiple acquisitions, delivering significant organic growth, and even riding out a hurricane to close out the year,” Bradford said.
Bitfarms (BITF) produced 217 BTC, down 7% month over month due to rising network difficulty. The company sold 173 BTC but added 44 BTC to its treasury, which now holds 1,147 BTC, valued at $73.4 million.
TeraWulf (WULF) mined 176 BTC, operating at an average of 8.2 EH/s. CEO Paul Prager said the company focused on demand response events and performance tuning to maximize profitability.
Core Scientific (CORZ) mined 345 BTC, slightly down from 358 BTC in August, and sold 370 BTC.
"Our outstanding team continues to advance our customer-funded project to modify certain of our data centers to deliver nearly 400 megawatts of digital infrastructure for high-performance computing,” said CEO Adam Sullivan. “In September, we completed the migration of all ASIC miners from two of our bitcoin mining data centers designated for HPC conversion.
While overall production has grown for several miners, others, like Cipher Mining, took a different approach, selling 923 BTC in September while mining just 155 BTC.
Hut 8 (HUT) produced 85 BTC, bringing its total holdings to 9,106 BTC. The company also expanded its partnership with mining rig manufacturer Bitmain Technologies and launched a new GPU-as-a-service offering.
Hut 8's stock was the standout performer, rising 21% during the month. Despite declining revenues, the strong market performance and the overall rise in hash rate reflect cautious optimism in the sector.
Last month, Macquarie initiated "outperform" ratings on MARA, Riot Platforms, Core Scientific, CleanSpark and Cipher Mining, citing a growing shift from crypto-specific operations to AI and high-performance computing (HPC) models. Meanwhile, analysts at Bernstein said AI-focused Bitcoin miner stocks are outperforming their rivals due to stronger conviction in the data center thesis amid choppy bitcoin price action.
“While their hash rate growth may generally be slower than that of pure-play Bitcoin miners, AI-focused operators are expanding their data center infrastructure in parallel, which provides additional opportunities in the rapidly growing AI sector, the analysts said,” wrote The Block’s James Hunt.
Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.
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