The total market cap of the 14 U.S.-listed bitcoin (BTC) miners followed by JPMorgan hit a record high of $22.8 billion on June 15, the Wall Street bank said in a research report on Monday.
The bank noted that almost all the companies outperformed bitcoin in the first two weeks of June, with Core Scientific (CORZ) the best performer, adding 117%, and Argo Blockchain (ARBK) the worst, dropping 7%. The world’s largest cryptocurrency fell 3% in the same period.
Bitcoin mining stocks gained in the first half of the month as investors reacted positively to news of Core Scientific’s deal with artificial intelligence firm CoreWeave, the report said.
Mining difficulty also extended its fall since April's reward halving.
“The network hashrate, a proxy for industry competition and mining difficulty, declined ~7 EH/s (1%) since May,” analysts Reginald Smith and Charles Pearce wrote.
U.S.-listed miners have increased their share of the network hashrate and, combined, the 14 companies now “accounts for ~23.8% of the global network hashrate,” a gain of almost 1% on the previous month.
This was the second month of network hashrate gains for U.S. miners, the bank noted, and an encouraging sign that “inefficient private operators scaled back operations post-halving.”
Read more: Bitcoin Miners With Attractive Power Contracts Are Potential M&A Targets, JPMorgan Says
Edited by Sheldon Reback.