According to a report from The Block, as of June 15, the market value of publicly traded Bitcoin mining companies in the United States has reached a record $22.8 billion. With the rise in network hash rate and the diversification opportunities in artificial intelligence data centers, US mining stocks saw a rebound in the first half of June.
Morgan Stanley analysts Reginald Smith and Charles Pearce wrote in a report to clients on Monday (the 17th) that 14 US-listed mining stocks rebounded in the first half of June, with Core Scientific, TeraWulf, and IREN leading the way with increases of 117%, 80%, and 70% respectively. Argo Blockchain was the only mining company to see a decline in stock price in June, dropping by 7%, while Bitcoin fell by 3% during the same period.
Marathon Digital is currently the largest publicly traded mining company in the US, with a market value of $5.3 billion, followed by CleanSpark and Riot Platforms with market values of $4 billion and $3 billion respectively.
Earlier this month, AI cloud services provider CoreWeave proposed to acquire Core Scientific for $1.6 billion, a 55% premium over market value, but the acquisition was rejected. Prior to this, the two companies had reached a 12-year, $3.5 billion cooperation agreement, allowing CoreWeave to host its AI-related services in Core Scientific’s data centers.
Morgan Stanley analysts stated that in response to the agreement between Core Scientific and CoreWeave, the industry’s total market value increased by 24% since the end of May, around $4.4 billion. In recent months, other mining companies such as Hut 8 and IREN have also taken similar AI diversification measures to expand revenue following the Bitcoin reward halving in April.
US-listed mining companies increasing their share of total network hash rate
Analysts believe that another factor contributing to the growth in market value of Bitcoin miners is the increasing share of network hash rate held by US Bitcoin miners.
According to data from The Block, apart from the initial increase in transaction fee rewards due to the Runes-related speculation, Bitcoin’s network hash rate has decreased by about 5% since the halving event, with the seven-day moving average hash rate dropping from 629.44 EH/s to 598.08 EH/s. However, the relative hash rate of US-listed mining companies continues to rise, reaching a market share of 23.8%, higher than May’s 22.9% and April’s 21%, as more inefficient operations have exited the network after the halving.
Analysts add that despite the overall decline in hash rate, the hash price of Bitcoin (an indicator of how much revenue miners can expect to generate from a specific amount of hash rate) is still about 15% lower than the bear market low point in December 2022, and 45% lower than pre-halving levels, which they deem “unsustainable”. They say:
Bitcoin hash price index, source:
The Block
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