Майнинг биткоина: падение прибыльности на фоне роста интереса к высокопроизводительным вычислениям Translation: Bitcoin Mining: Profitability Decline Amid Rising Interest in High-Performance Computing

In September, the profitability of mining the leading cryptocurrency dropped by over 7%, with daily earnings per EH/s of hash rate falling from $56,000 to $52,000. This information comes from CoinDesk, citing a report by Jefferies.

Experts from the investment bank identified the main reasons for the decline in mining profitability as a 2% decrease in bitcoin prices over the month and an overall increase in network computational power by approximately 9%.

At the beginning of the fourth quarter, the hash rate slightly decreased, reducing competition; however, a sharp correction in the asset intensified the strain on its mining economics, the experts emphasized.

This assessment is supported by data from Hashrate Index. Following the major market correction on October 11, the hash price has consistently remained below $49 per PH/s per day. Lower metric values this year were recorded in April when the price of bitcoin dropped below $90,000.

Publicly traded mining companies based in the U.S. generated 3,401 BTC in September, compared to 3,576 in the previous month.

MARA Holdings led the pack by mining 736 BTC, followed by CleanSpark, which mined 629 BTC. These same firms also have the highest deployed hash rates—60.4 EH/s and 50 EH/s, respectively.

However, in spite of the declining mining profitability, miner stocks are experiencing rapid growth. According to a report from TheMinerMag, the market capitalization of the 15 largest American companies in the industry reached $90 billion by mid-October. Since September 15, Bitfarms’ stock has surged by 162%, Canaan’s value increased by 149%, and CleanSpark’s gained 125%. During this time, bitcoin’s price fell by 3.7%.

Experts attribute the significant divergence of these trends to the «AI pivot» among cryptocurrency miners. Their advantage amid the high-performance computing boom is their existing access to energy resources and established infrastructure.

One of the largest transactions in this vein was the acquisition of the mining center operator Core Scientific by AI hyperscaler CoreWeave for $9 billion in July.

In August, Google increased its stake in TeraWulf to 14% by expanding financial guarantees to $3.2 billion for a deal between the miner and cloud AI platform Fluidstack. In September, the company announced plans to raise approximately $3 billion to construct data centers through a structure supported by the tech corporation.

In the same month, Google assisted Fluidstack in securing a lease agreement with another cryptocurrency miner, Cipher Mining. The corporation guaranteed the fulfillment of the English startup’s commitments valued at $1.4 billion in exchange for 5.4% of the miner’s equity.

IREN announced the expansion of its AI Cloud division in August, investing about $193 million in NVIDIA Blackwell B200 graphics processors. At that time, the company was among the top four mining firms with a hash rate of at least 50 EH/s, alongside MARA, CleanSpark, and Cango. TheMinerMag noted that only IREN from this quartet began its expansion into AI.

On October 20, CleanSpark announced a shift from «pure mining» to high-performance computing (HPC).

The company hired industry veteran Jeffrey Thomas as vice president of AI-based data centers.

Bitdeer announced plans to repurpose its mining facility in Norway for HPC services in its September operational report. The firm also aims to expand its existing AI capabilities in Southeast Asia and the U.S.

It’s worth noting that in August, experts from GoMining predicted a wave of institutional investments in bitcoin mining amid the surge in AI computing.