MARA Holdings’ blocks won and Bitcoin production—two major metrics of mining productivity—fell 6% on a month-to-month basis in February, the bitcoin miner said in a press release Tuesday. MARA attributed the declines to increased network difficulty and February’s three fewer operational days than the previous month. MARA’s shares finished at $13.94, up 1.3% despite lingering in negative territory for a good part of the day. MARA is down nearly 21% over the past month, according to Yahoo Finance, amid a 10% decline in bitcoin’s and wider crypto markets. Last week, the Florida-based firm noted in its fourth quarter earnings that it had produced roughly 27%, or 998, fewer blocks over the last financial quarter compared to the same period a year earlier, even as it beat analysts’ expectations for revenue and earnings per share. Those results occurred when bitcoin was still rising.
More competition, fewer rewards
Yet a brewing trade war and other macroeconomic uncertainties that unsettled crypto markets have rippled through the mining sector. Last April, a pre-programmed update to the Bitcoin network’s code slashed the number of tokens awarded to miners of each block by half, rendering mining less profitable. Meanwhile, rising energy costs have presented an additional challenge, MARA’s energy and hosting costs also rose sharply by 70%, totaling $127.4 million in Q4 2024, compared to $75.1 million in Q4 2023. In its statement, MARA said that it was nearing completion of a 40-megawatt data center in Ohio where it will install more than 10 thousand S21 Pro immersion miners and that it would look to expand its “footprint in energy generation.” Cryptocurrency miner Bit Digital’s Bitcoin production fell to roughly 165 tokens in the last quarter of 2024—a 59% decrease from the year-prior quarter. Meanwhile, Bitdeer Technologies Group notched $69 million in fourth-quarter revenue compared to $115 million a year ago. Bit Digital and Bitdeer rose 4.3% and 0.5%, respectively, on Tuesday. The companies’ shares have tumbled 26% and 32% over the past month. Bitcoin was recently trading above $87,300, up more than 1% over the past 24 hours, according to crypto markets data provider CoinGecko.
Edited by James Rubin