Public Miners Are Outperforming Bitcoin

Despite the recent rise in Bitcoin prices, public Bitcoin mining stocks have started the year with more impressive profits than the asset itself.

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Public mining update

A high-level view of Bitcoin holdings shows a downward trend in holdings across public miners throughout 2022, from a peak of 46,930 BTC in April 2022 to 31,892 BTC in January 2023. got it. A 32% decrease in 10 months. With the sale of Bitcoin by Bitfarms, Core Scientific and Northern Data, public miner holdings are now mainly concentrated on Marathon Digital, Hut 8 and Riot platforms.

The trend of hash rate expansion is “upward only”, with public miners increasing hash rate by 129% last year. This growth has been a key driver of overall hash rate expansion with public miners accounting for nearly 25% of all hash rates on any given day, with network hash rates recently reaching 300 EH/s. This percentage is an underestimate as it does not include all public miners such as Cipher and Terawulf.

Mining Production Update Notes

marathon made a statement Regarding their choice to sell the bitcoins mined by the company, they said, “As bitcoin production increases and becomes more stable, we will cover some of our operating expenses and general We have made a strategic decision to sell a portion of our Bitcoin for corporate purposes.We plan to continue to sell a portion of our Bitcoin in 2023 to cover our monthly operating expenses.”

In their announcement, they shared where they will extend their hashrate further. “The company expects to install about 23 EH/s of capacity near mid-2023.”

Similarly, HIVE’s production update “HIVE will focus on HODL the green bitcoin mined from ASIC and sell all bitcoins earned from GPU mining hashrate.”

riot platform Announce postponed timeline Unfortunately, as a result of this damage, the previously announced goal of reaching 12.5 EH/s in total hash rate capacity in Q1 2023 is expected to be delayed. We will provide additional updates as the impact on the planned deployment schedule becomes more clear. In the meantime, construction of the remaining infrastructure at the Rockdale facility continues to progress, with Building E currently 50% complete and expected to be fully completed this quarter. We also continue to expand our Corsicana facility. ”

iris energy Increased mining ability From 2.0 to 5.5 EH/s by acquiring new miners using prepayment.

In other public mining news, Hut 8 Share about recent mergers and its HODL strategy:

“On February 7, 2023, Hut 8 announced a merger of equals with US Data Mining Group, Inc. dba US Bitcoin Corp (“USBTC”). Economic mining, highly diversified revenue streams, industry leading best practices in ESG.

“We have been purposeful and strategic in pursuing our HODL strategy. We are now able to use some strategically to cover operational costs,” said Jaime Leverton, CEO. “In the long term, we expect to build a strong self-mining, hosting and managed infrastructure for our operations, and for his HPC organization, we will sell products while focusing on completing the merger with USBTC. I believe that is the right approach.”

Hashrate all-time high

With cost-sensitive miners turning their rigs back on, Bitcoin’s seven-day average hash rate hit a new all-time high at a weekly average of 303 EH/s.

The next difficulty adjustment is predicted to be +12.0% on February 25th, as the network hashrate hit a new all-time high.

The expected increase in mining difficulty will take away some of the peace of mind felt in recent weeks due to increased USD denominated earnings. Bitcoin-equivalent miner earnings will once again head for new lows.

As hash rates, and subsequently mining difficulty, continue to grow toward higher levels, older generation machines and inefficient operations will continue to be weighed down at the expense of more efficient business by newer generation mining machines. prize.

public minor performance

Public miners are the best performers in the stock market so far this year, with shares of Iris Energy leading with a massive 255% gain, followed by shares of Bitfarms, Hut 8 and HIVE Blockchain.

The performance of these companies against Bitcoin is equally impressive, as it beats its early 2023 baseline (BTC).

Given the ruthless competitiveness of the global mining industry and the programmatic reduction of block subsidies that continue to accrue every 210,000 Bitcoin blocks, Bitcoin’s outperformance is likely to be a very difficult order. understand.

Regardless of what direction Bitcoin and the broader stock market take next, mining stocks will continue to offer investors plenty of volatility, and the right market conditions will drive much of that volatility into the upside. present in the form

final note

Global investors will be hard-pressed to find anything on the planet that continues to thrive and grow at a pace that matches Bitcoin’s hashrate. , the evolution of the most powerful distributed computing power the world has ever seen, but most people miss the forest when they see the trees.

Short-term market correlations and exchange rate performance aside, Bitcoin remains the world’s single best chance to achieve a globally neutral currency protocol for ultimate settlement. increase.