Bitcoin mining is a ‘survival game’ at this point; halving didn’t do any favors

“Bitcoin miners are caught in a vice, and the pressure’s only intensifying. The April 2024 halving didn’t just tighten the screws; it flipped the industry on its head,” said David Materazzi, CEO of automated trading platform Galileo FX.

Following the halving event, miners’ block rewards were slashed by 50%, cutting into bitcoin (BTC-USD) production and underlying revenues. And with elevated operating costs, many miners experienced dwindling profits during the quarter ended June 30, 2024. The 4% decline in bitcoin’s price during the three-month period only exacerbated the financial pressure.

As such, Materazzi expects “the weak to be picked off, leaving only the leanest operations standing tall.”

While most miners are struggling to stay afloat, a few are standing out. Riot Platforms (NASDAQ:RIOT), for instance, posted its first quarterly loss since Q3 2023, as the quadrennial halving reduced available bitcoin (BTC-USD) production. Materazzi didn’t seem all that worried, though, saying Riot “is bulldozing ahead, cranking up its hash rate to a staggering 41 [exahashes per second] by 2025, all while sitting on a fat stack of cash.”

Marathon Digital Holdings (NASDAQ:MARA) also turned in a wider-than-expected loss in Q2, reflecting a combination of unfavorable mark-to-market adjustment of digital assets and a decrease in bitcoin (BTC-USD) production after April’s halving. But the company still expects its 2024 hash rate to jump to 50 exahashes per second (EH/s), compared with its installed hash rate of 31.5 EH/s in Q2.

In an effort to sustain cash flow stability, some miners have jumped into artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. HIVE Digital Technologies (NASDAQ:HIVE) in one of them, with its HPC segment accounting for about 8% of its total fiscal Q1 revenue. The company delivered a stronger-than-expected profit for the quarter ended June 30, 2024, as the miner navigated the halving by boosting its installed hashrate.

Blake Morgan, managing partner of crypto tokenization firm Mineral Vault, noted that a handful of miners seem to be adjusting to the impacts of the halving – which typically play out over a few months – “by securing cheaper sources of energy or gaining efficiency in their operations.”

Conversely, he added, “smaller miners that use waste energy are actually more successful than larger rivals that can’t cut electricity bills.”

Going forward, miners may experience relief in the upcoming quarters, as “the price of bitcoin tends to appreciate months subsequent to a halving event,” Morgan said.

Other bitcoin miners: Hut 8 (NASDAQ:HUT), Sphere 3D (NASDAQ:ANY), Digihost Technology (NASDAQ:DGHI), Core Scientific (NASDAQ:CORZ), CLeanSpark (NASDAQ:CLSK), TeraWulf (NASDAQ:WULF), Iris Energy (NASDAQ:IREN), Cipher Mining (NASDAQ:CIFR), Bitfarms (NASDAQ:BITF), Greenidge Generation (NASDAQ:GREE), Stronghold Digital Mining (NASDAQ:SDIG), Bit Digital (NASDAQ:BTBT), Bitdeer Technologies (NASDAQ:BTDR).