Bitcoin Mining Profitability Records Almost 20% Spike: Report

According to a Jefferies report, Bitcoin (BTC) mining profitability reportedly recorded almost a 20% uptick. This surge coincided with a nearly equal spike in the price of flagship cryptocurrency Bitcoin and a modest gain in the network hashrate.

BTC Price Increases as Gold Price Spikes

On Monday, investment firm Jefferies published a research report detailing Bitcoin mining progress. BTC mining profitability rose by 18.2% in May while the network hashrate gained 3.5%. This hashrate is the collective computational power used to mine and process transactions on a Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchain like Bitcoin. 

Apart from the increase in hashrate, which serves as a proxy for competition amongst miners, Bitcoin price registered some profits, spurred by the recent rally in gold price. 

For context, investors turned to inflation-protected assets with the spike in gold prices. According to Jonathan Petersen and Jan Aygul, analysts from Jeffries, this move was in anticipation of a ballooning fiscal deficit in the United States, amongst other countries. 

MARA Holdings and CleanSpark Leads US-listed Mining Companies 

Jeffries’ report also listed the volume of Bitcoin mined by US mining companies last month. All the US-listed mining facilities mined a total of 3,754 BTC. 

According to the report, this is a notable increase compared to April, when they only mined 3,278 BTC. On the other hand, miners in North America made up 26.3% of the total network in May, compared to 24.1% the previous month.

Out of this group, MARA Holdings (MARA) mined 950 Bitcoin, marking a 35% increase from April. It has successfully raised its total reserves to 49,179 BTC. It was followed by CleanSpark (CLSK) at 694 mined Bitcoin. It is worth noting that MARA’s hashrate is still the largest at 58.3 exahashes per second (EH/s).

Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Records Slight Decline

Meanwhile, Bitcoin mining difficulty has recorded a slight decline following a record high. This outlook offers some relief to miners, especially those who are dealing with rising costs and reduced block rewards. 

In mid-June, CryptoQuant shared data showing that the mining difficulty stood at around 126.4 trillion. This was just below the All-Time High (ATH) of 126.9 trillion recorded on May 31. 

Mining difficulty adjusts every two weeks to ensure that new blocks are mined roughly every 10 minutes. This is regardless of how much computing power is in the network. Therefore, the new mining difficulty record is expected in a few days.