Two miners stand out in the bitcoin mining industry: Marathon and Riot. They notably display the largest BTC reserves with HUT8.
TOP 5 revenues for the second quarter of 2023
The miners with the highest revenues are Core Scientific ($126 million), Bitdeer (94 million), Marathon (82 million), Riot (77 million) and CleanSpark (45 million).
However, none managed to make a profit. In particular, the decline in bitcoin and the ever-rapid increase in mining difficulty (+24% in the second quarter) are responsible.
The ranking of miners with the lowest cost to mine 1 BTC is dominated by Riot. The Texan spends $8,390 to mine 1 BTC!
This is followed by Cipher ($9,188), WULF ($9,234), Cleanspark ($12,785) and Core Scientific ($13,412). The giant Marathon, for its part, costs $18,873. Salaries are apparently juicy at Marathon.
Here is a summary in terms of direct costs and operating costs:
Marathon has the second largest reserve with the equivalent of $379 million in bitcoin and $130 million in cash.
Riot also shows around $500 million in reserves, but only $212 million in bitcoin.
HUT8 follows and far behind HIVE, CleanSpark, Birfarm, CIpher. Core Scientific holds zero BTC:
Hashrate War
In the second half, Marathon surpassed Core Scientific with now more than 156,000 last-generation minors held in their own right.
Fred Thiel’s firm had an installed hashrate of 17.7 EH/s at the end of July. This figure is also conservative since Marathon practices overclocking thanks to its cooling of the ASICs by “immersion cooling”.
In July, Riot was running nearly 96,000 miners representing 10.7 EH/s. This hashrate should increase significantly at the beginning of September after recovering from the horrors of last winter.
Core Scientific owns 145,000 miners (15.2 EH/s). The latter represent 69% of its entire fleet. The rest is linked to its hosting activity
HIVE displays a much more modest hashrate of 3.4 EH/s. HUT8 is even lower, at 2.6 EH/s. The Canadian company, however, plans to soon reach 7.5 EH/s after its merger with USBTC. BitFarm reaches 5.3 EH/s.
Bitcoin harvest
RIOT mined 410 BTC in the month of July alone. Small downside: 400 BTC were sold. Core Scientific mined 1022 bitcoins. Everything also sold.
HUT8 posts a harvest of 834 BTC for the entire second quarter. The miner holds 8,152 BTC in total! HIVE mined 399 BTC over the same period, with 396 BTC sold to cover operational costs.
Marathon mined a total of 2926 BTC in Q2. An increase of more than 300% over one year. More than a third of this harvest was able to be kept. Its reserves now reach more than 12,500 BTC! This is significantly more than Riot and its jackpot of 7,275 BTC.
In July, the miners who sold the lowest share of their bitcoin production were CleanSpark (7%) and SATO (16%). Next comes Marathon (64%). All the others sold more than 70% of their production, or even 100%:
Miners still losing money
Bitfarms reported a net loss of $25 million in the second quarter. The company, however, managed to reduce its debt over the past year, from $160 million to $13.7 million at the end of July. The strategy is to erase all debt in anticipation of the next halving.
Core Scientific also posted a net loss. Nearly $10 million. Knowing that its debt exceeded a billion dollars a year ago. Much of this debt should soon be converted into shares.
The net loss was $19 million for Marathon14 M for CleanSpark, 12 M for CipherMining or even 27 M for Riot.
With less than nine months until the halving, miners would do well to clean up their balance sheet to have sufficient cash flow. This additional room for maneuver will make it possible to cope with energy costs which could soar again…
Not to mention the fact that the rally generally taking place before the halving could potentially be attenuated by the wait for the famous ETF.
Conclusion
As the April/May 2024 halving approaches, miners will need to focus their efforts on obtaining the cheapest energy. We will have to be agile and find surpluses of renewable electricity in the four corners of the world.
Another important factor is the efficiency of the ASIC fleet. This is something we would like minors to communicate more about.
Finally, note that miners like Riot and Marathon who benefit from load-shedding agreements with their electricity suppliers are also doing well. Benefiting from electricity credits to power-off during consumption peaks is a definite advantage. .
Securing your electricity supply on advantageous terms will be at the heart of the strategy of miners who will survive the halving. This reality was recently reminded of HUT8, which was encountering difficulties with its energy supplier.
Let us end by noting that in June, the hash rate increased by 70% year-on-year. And electricity consumption has only increased by 38% over the same time.
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