Bitcoin Network Hashrate Declined in June as Miners Reacted to Recent Heatwave: JPMorgan

The Bitcoin

network monthly average hashrate fell about 3% in June, Wall Street bank JPMorgan (JPM) said in a research report Tuesday.

The hashrate refers to the total combined computational power used to mine and process transactions on a proof-of-work blockchain, and is a proxy for competition in the industry and mining difficulty. It is measured in exahashes per second (EH/s).

“Our sense is the decline was driven by seasonal weather-related curtailment in the U.S., and note that Cipher, IREN and Riot alone operate >80 EH/s in Texas,” analysts Reginald Smith and Charles Pearce wrote.

Bitcoin mining profitability continues to improve. The bank’s analysts estimated that miners earned an average of $55,300 per EH/s in daily block reward revenue last month, a 7% increase from April.

Daily block reward gross profit rose 13% month-on-month to the highest level since January, the analysts noted.

The total market cap of the 13 U.S.-listed bitcoin miners the bank follows rose 23%, or around $5.3 billion, from the previous month, the report said.

Operators with high-performance computing (HPC) exposure outperformed pure-play miners due to speculation of a deal between Core Scientific (CORZ) and CoreWeave (CRWV).

IREN (IREN) outperformed the group with a 67% gain, while Bitfarms (BITF) was the worst performer with a 19% decline, the report added.