Bitcoin miners saw their profitability increase for the second month in a row in December, reaching levels not seen since April, according to a JPMorgan research report.
JPMorgan Report: Bitcoin Mining Profitability Increased for Second Time in December
The bank noted that the increase in Bitcoin's price has outpaced the growth in the network's hashrate, resulting in higher daily revenue and gross profit for miners.
JPMorgan estimates that miners earned an average of $57,100 per second (EH/s) in daily block reward revenue in December, a 10% increase from November.
According to analysts Reginald Smith and Charles Pearce, daily revenue and gross profit per EH/s are down 43% and 52% respectively from pre-halving figures.
Hashrate, which measures the total computing power devoted to mining the Bitcoin network, increased by 6% in December to an average of 779 EH/s. However, the growth rate for 2024 was slower overall, with hashrate up 54% year-to-date compared to a 103% increase in 2023.
Increasing Difficulty and Market Impact
The report noted that mining difficulty, a measure of how difficult it is to mine a Bitcoin block, increased by 7% in December and is currently 27% higher than pre-split levels.
The market value of the 14 publicly traded Bitcoin mining companies tracked by JPMorgan fell 23% to $28 billion in December after a strong 52% increase in November.
The report highlighted that among public miners, TeraWulf (WULF) is the only company to outperform Bitcoin in 2024, with an annual gain of 136% compared to Bitcoin’s 120% increase.
As Bitcoin’s rally continues and mining profitability rises, industry participants will be watching for further developments in the mining ecosystem, especially in the lead up to the expected market changes of 2025.
*This is not investment advice.
