BTC miners hope May flowers make investors forget Q1 showers

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Block reward mining economics have slightly improved over the past month or so, but the financial report cards haven’t caught up to this new golden age.

• Public miners more interested in pumping stocks than mining BTC
• Q1 figures remain grim
• May production numbers
• Cloud users mining whether they want to or not

Miners enjoyed a slightly more profitable May than other months this year, thanks to the BTC token shaking off its early-April funk, which saw the token’s value sink below $76,000. But BTC crossed the $100,000 threshold in the first week of May and has held that six-figure status ever since, so happy days are here again. (For the moment, as Israel’s latest attack on Iran has sent the token into a downward spiral.)

That said, miners are still struggling with record-high network difficulty and increasingly cutthroat competition. Some miners like Core Scientific (NASDAQ: CORZ) have signaled their focus going forward will be on AI/HPC (high-performance computing) data center operations, which offer far more predictable revenue streams.

Others have tried to focus investor attention on their new ‘BTC treasury’ gambit, issuing new debt and diluting existing shareholders’ equity to raise billions of dollars to buy additional tokens in the belief that the number will go up in perpetuity.

This has led to some interesting new PR strategies, including buying billboard space in urban centers despite these companies having no product or service to sell. That is, beyond their Nasdaq-listed shares. (Other firms that also don’t do much beyond buying BTC are employing similar ‘buy our stock’ awareness campaigns.)

Miners currently account for four of the top-10 ‘treasury’ firms, led by MARA (NASDAQ: MARA), which ranks second only to Michael Saylor’s Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) (NASDAQ: MSTR) in terms of the number of BTC under its control.

But like Saylor, MARA has borrowed big time to fund its purchases. In the short-term, it needs to show investors that there’s some tangible benefit beyond the elusive promise of the tokens hitting $1 million apiece at some undetermined future date.

So last month, MARA announced that it was allocating “an initial 500” of its nearly 50,000 BTC to investment adviser Two Prime to generate the kind of ‘yield’ that apparently giving an investment adviser actual cash cannot achieve. Two Prime was already providing MARA with BTC-backed loans and MARA will use the proceeds from this latest deal to—what else—buy more BTC. Expect more of this going forward because this is the very definition of ‘pot committed.’

Drawn and first-quartered

Since our last report on this subject, a handful of laggard operators have filed their Q1 earnings report cards, which make for generally depressing reading.

Bitdeer (NASDAQ: BTDR) generated revenue of $70 million in the three months ending March 31, a significant decline from the $119.5 million generated in the same period last year. While the cost of revenue fell 14% to $73.4 million, Bitdeer’s gross margins slipped from 28.5% in Q124 to -4.6% in this most recent quarter. And while Bitdeer booked a net profit of $409.5 million, that was entirely due to $503 million in non-cash fair value changes of derivative liabilities.

Bitfarms (NASDAQ: BITF) reported its Q1 revenue rising by one-third year-on-year to $67 million, but its expenses rose by nearly one-half, and its net loss rose sixfold to $36 million. CEO Ben Gagnon said the company’s mining ops were now providing a “stable, low-capex and free cash flow foundation” that will allow the company to focus on growing its AI/HPC data center expansion “while still capitalizing on any potential Bitcoin upside in 2025 and 2026.”

The Bitmain-affiliated BitFuFu (NASDAQ: FUFU) saw its Q1 revenue fall by nearly one-half to $78 million, resulting in a net loss of nearly $17 million compared to a $35.3 million profit in Q124. Around $1.4 million of this loss was due to the price of the BTC that BitFuFu sold in Q1 being below its carrying value. (BitD’ohD’oh!)

BitFuFu CEO Leo Lu said the company had endured “a more challenging operating environment” thanks to the April 2024 block reward halving and the company’s hash rate falling more than one-quarter year-on-year. But Lu claimed the company had “broadened our network, added new partners, expanded our global footprint and added new customers across key growth markets.” So this is all just a phase, apparently.

Canaan Inc (NASDAQ: CAN) had a slightly more positive Q1, with revenue rising 136% year-on-year to $82.8 million. Mining revenue more than doubled to $24.3 million, while revenue from sales of its HPC hardware shot up 250% to $58.3 million.

Meanwhile, Canaan’s cost of revenue rose a comparatively modest 25% year-on-year, allowing Q1’s operating loss to nearly halve to $37.6 million. However, the company’s net loss more than doubled to $86.4 million due to significant changes in the fair value of its various debt obligations.

On May 16, Canaan revealed that it had been notified by the Nasdaq exchange that it was in violation of the listing rules due to its share price averaging below $1 for more than 30 consecutive days. Canaan has been given until November 10 to improve its performance or face delisting.

On May 27, Canaan announced a $30 million share repurchase program aimed at boosting its flagging stock. So far, the buyback has only enjoyed partial success, as the shares slipped from around $0.63 before the announcement to $0.58 a week ago. On June 9, Canaan’s CEO and CFO engaged in some performative confidence-boosting by announcing their own share purchases, which nudged the shares up to $0.77, but that’s still well off its $1+ target.

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May the mining gods be with you

Also, Bitfarms is two weeks overdue in releasing their May results, while Hut 8 (NASDAQ: HUT) hasn’t issued any new numbers since shifting its mining operations to the Trump-linked American Bitcoin Corp, which has yet to issue any production updates following its early-April launch. Anyway…

• MARA produced 950 BTC in May, up from 705 in April, representing a new post-halving high for the company. MARA won 282 blocks last month, another personal best, despite hash rate rising only one point to 58.3 EH/s (although that’s also a record). As befitting its exalted HODL’er status, MARA sold none of its BTC last month, pushing its total stack to 49,179 tokens.
• CleanSpark (NASDAQ: CLSK) mined 694 BTC in May, up from 633 in April, with month-end hash rate hitting 45.6 EH/s. The company sold 293.5 BTC last month, part of its “broader strategic approach to capital management” that limits its need to raise additional capital to fund its operations. CleanSpark’s BTC treasury nonetheless rose to 12,502 tokens, “all from mining operations and without any equity issued.”
• Iris Energy (NASDAQ: IREN) produced 627 BTC in May, up from April’s 579, as hash rate rose nearly two points to 38.4 EH/s. The company’s nascent ‘AI Cloud Services’ revenue was up 10% month-on-month to $2.2 million, still tiny compared to the $64.7 million earned from mining, but forward progress all the same. On June 11, IREN announced that it had upsized its previous $450 million capital raise to $500 million, with most of the proceeds earmarked for general corporate purposes and working capital.
• Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: RIOT) mined 514 BTC in May, an 11% rise from April’s 463, thanks to the average operating hash rate rising nearly two points to 35.4 EH/s. Riot sold 500 BTC in May, 25 more than it unloaded in April, leaving its treasury at 19,225 tokens. Riot’s revenue from electricity credits—that’s the money it earns from local governments for not mining and thus not overloading the local grid—rose 10% month-on-month to $2.2 million.
• The Shanghai-based Cango Inc (NYSE: CANG) produced 484.5 BTC in May, a slight improvement on April’s 470, boosting its treasury to 3,429 tokens. Cango only began mining full-time this spring after selling its mainstay China-based automotive sales platform, a transaction it completed on May 29. As such, Cango has applied to the China Securities Regulatory Commission to terminate its status as a ‘China Concept Stock.’
• BitFuFu self-mined 43 BTC in May, seven more than in April, while its cloud mining customers saw their production surge from 173 in April to 357 in May, for a total production of 400 BTC for the month. BitFuFu credited the 91.4% month-on-month rise to a full month’s contribution from the flurry of new Bitmain rigs it’s been deploying since late-April. Average hash rate improved more than one-fifth month-on-month to 34.1 EH/s.
• Bitdeer generated 196 BTC in May, 30 better than April’s result, as hashrate improved 1.3 points to 13.7 EH/s. Bitdeer hopes to fully energize its Norway and Bhutan operations by the end of this month, which will boost its hash rate to over 40 EH/s by October. Bitdeer sold 1.6 EH/s worth of its Sealminer A2 rigs to external customers last month, and this month will see the release of its Sealminer A3 rigs for pre-order, so get ‘em while they’re hot.
• Cipher Mining (NASDAQ: CIFR) claimed 179 BTC in May, five more than in April. Cipher sold 64 BTC last month, a fraction of the 350 sold in April, allowing its treasury to improve to 966 tokens. Cipher finished May with a hash rate of 13.5 EH/s but aims to boost this to over 23 EH/s in July after the rest of the rigs it ordered are installed at its ‘Black Pearl’ site in Texas.
• Hive Digital (TSXV: HIVE) mined 139 BTC in May, a decided improvement on April’s 102 tokens, as average hash rate hit 8.5 EH/s in May, two points better than April. The boost came courtesy of Hive’s new 100 Mw hydro-powered Paraguay site and Hive hopes to boost hash rate to 18 EH/s by summer and to 25 EH/s by Q4.
• Finally, Canaan produced a record 109 BTC in May, up from 87 in April, as month-end operating hashrate rose 1.1 points to 7.3 EH/s. Canaan’s BTC treasury improved by 42 tokens to 1,466 (another record high). Canaan CEO Nangeng Zhang said May’s gains came despite the 10% tariffs imposed by the U.S. on its Malaysia-made rigs, which the company is doing its best to mitigate by emphasizing its Ethiopia-based operations.

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Cloudy with a chance of unapproved mining

Leaving the big boys aside for the moment, cloud-based mining has come a long way in recent years, allowing individuals who lack the basement space to host thousands of mining rigs to still participate in the network consensus mechanism. But other cloud customers who have zero interest in mining are nonetheless finding themselves participating in mining against their will.

Earlier this month, cloud computing security outfit Wiz Threat Research reported that a threat actor identified as JINX-0132 had exploited misconfigurations in web servers used by multiple firms to covertly download software that hijacks computing resources to mine the privacy coin Monero. (This isn’t the first instance of Monero-focused mining malware imposing its will on users.)

In Ukraine, police arrested a man who reportedly hacked an unspecified “international hosting company” to compromise over 5,000 customer accounts to mine cryptocurrency. The 35-year-old hacker earned over $4.4 million from his illicit activities before the hosting provider caught on and brought in the authorities. The suspect faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison if convicted.

So next time you’re driving downtown and you see a billboard promoting a mining stock and you wonder ‘what the heck is that about,’ remember that the answer might be ‘you.’

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