Bitcoin miners recorded their highest monthly profits in July since the last halving in April 2024. According to a note published by JP Morgan analysts, miners were able to net an average of $57,400 per EH/s in daily block reward revenue. The note was co-written by analysts Reginald L. Smith and Charles Pearce.
The report cited that July was another strong month for the miners. “Mining profitability reached the highest level since the most recent halving (Apr ’24), and ten of the thirteen miners we track outperformed BTC price appreciation for the month (+8%),” the report said. Bitcoin hit a new all-time high of $122,838 in July, reaching the peak of steady gains in the past two months. The price of the asset also remained steady, losing only about 8% after touching the value, according to data from CoinGecko.
Bitcoin miners’ monthly profits on the rise as difficulty increases
Despite seeing a rise in profits, miners have also faced several challenges, with a rise in mining difficulty and operational costs being some of them. In addition, the rewards for verifying transactions have dropped. In the last halving event in 2024, the reward dropped from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. According to the report, “daily revenue and gross profit per EH/S are 43% and 50% below pre-halving levels, respectively.” In the past month, mining difficulty increased by 9%.
Bitcoin mining difficulty measures how hard it is for miners to find a valid hash for the next block. The difficulty changes after every 2,016 blocks, which happens around every two weeks. This makes sure block time is around 10 minutes, no matter the changes in network hashrate. However, mining difficulty and hashrate are important to the network, maintaining security and Bitcoin’s stock-to-flow ratio, a metric that tracks scarcity.
According to reports, mining difficulty hit an all-time high of 127.6 trillion this week, showing that there is a growing need for computational power on the network. As it stands, average block time is presently around 10 minutes and 20 seconds, slightly above the 10-minute mark. According to data from CryptoQuant, mining difficulty dropped in June, hitting 116.9 trillion in early July. However, things started to change in late July, resuming the upward trend that has been tied to miner participation.
In addition, United Kingdom asset manager Farside Investors said that the number of coins that the top 11 miners have added cumulatively dropped in the first six months of the year. Mining operations, which require a great deal of electricity to run, face higher costs when the price of Bitcoin drops, making it harder to sustain operations. The Bitcoin mining industry is largely made up of industrial-sized operations, which are typically warehouses full of computers that process transactions on the network.
On Friday, the share price of the world’s largest miner, MARA Holdings, dropped 3.6%. Earlier in the week, the company announced that it had made a revenue of $238 million in the second quarter, representing a 64% rise from the year before. Net income also rose by 505% to a record $808 million, due in part to the fair value of MARA’s Bitcoin holdings.
