US-listed Bitcoin miners have reached a new milestone with a record market capitalization of $22.8 billion, as revealed in a recent report by JPMorgan. The report highlighted the strong performance of these companies in comparison to Bitcoin itself during the first half of June.
While Bitcoin experienced a slight decline of 3%, the majority of U.S.-listed miners saw positive growth, with Core Scientific leading the way with a remarkable 117% increase in value. This positive market performance was attributed to investor excitement surrounding Core Scientific’s recent partnership with artificial intelligence firm CoreWeave. On the other hand, Argo Blockchain saw a small drop of 7%.
The report also noted a decrease in mining difficulty following the reward halving event in April. The network hashrate, which indicates industry competition and mining difficulty, decreased by approximately 7 EH/s (1%) since May. U.S.-listed miners have been increasing their share of the network hashrate, now representing around 23.8% of the global network hashrate. This marks a gain of almost 1% compared to the previous month.
Analysts Reginald Smith and Charles Pearce from JPMorgan observed that this was the second consecutive month of network hashrate gains for U.S. miners, indicating a positive trend. They suggested that inefficient private operators may have scaled back operations following the halving event.
While CleanSpark and TeraWulf have been performing well in 2024, with year-to-date gains of 58.55% and 66.96% respectively, other companies like Marathon Digital and Riot Platforms have experienced declines of 11.43% and nearly 31%, respectively.
Bitcoin mining stocks received a boost last week after United States presidential candidate Donald Trump pledged to enhance mining operations in the country. Trump expressed his desire for all remaining Bitcoin to be produced domestically, highlighting the potential for the United States to become a dominant player in energy. This statement followed a meeting between Trump and industry leaders from the Bitcoin sector, where he assured them of his support if elected president in November.