Bitcoin miner profits reached their highest monthly mark in July since the last halving in April of 2024, JP Morgan analysts wrote in a note published Friday.
Miners were able to earn an average of $57,400 per EH/s in daily block reward revenue, the analysts, Reginald L. Smith and Charles Pearce, wrote.
“July was another strong month for Bitcoin miners,” the report read. “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%).”
Bitcoin hit a record high of $122,838 in July, capping more than two months of fairly steady gains, and the price has remained within about 8% of that high point even after retreating, according to cryptocurrency markets data provider CoinGecko.
But miners have also faced ongoing challenges—increased operational costs and mining difficulty coupled with lowered rewards for verifying transactions on the blockchain. The report noted that “daily revenue and gross profit per EH/S are 43% and 50% below pre-halving levels, respectively.”
Over the month, mining difficulty increased 9%.
The number of tokens that the top 11 miners have added cumulatively declined in four or the first six months of the year, according to U.K. asset manager Farside Investors, which did not yet have July data.
In the most recent halving, which takes place every four years, the reward declined from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.
Mining operations, which require significant electricity consumption, face higher costs when Bitcoin prices drop, as it becomes more costly to sustain operations.
The Bitcoin mining industry is largely made up of industrial sized operations, typically warehouses full of computers that process transactions on the network. The huge amounts of energy for these computer networks is difficult to get cheaply.
On Friday, the share price of MARA Holdings, the world’s largest miner, fell 3.6%. Earlier in the week, it disclosed $238 million in second quarter revenue, a 64% jump from a year prior. Net income rose 505% to a record $808 million, partly due to a $1.2 billion gain in the fair value of MARA’s Bitcoin holdings.
