08-13-2025 
|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Economic tariffs have block reward miners feeling uneasy, while July’s production numbers led to the dethroning of the longtime champion.
- Mining difficulty hits new highs, miners face retroactive ASIC tariffs
- Trump-linked miner ABTC gets Winklevii investment
- Q2 reports a mixed bag
- July production chart crowns a new king
The BTC network mining difficulty rate keeps setting new all-time highs despite a temporary retreat in early July. On August 9, the rating increased by 1.4% to 129.44 trillion (on average, the number of hashes required to successfully mine a new block). It’s the 11th increase this year, which began with a rate below 110 trillion.
The increased cost of finding new blocks is partially mitigated by the surge in BTC’s fiat price over that same span. From a ~$94,500 price on January 1, BTC finished July at over $115,000 after hitting a new record high of nearly $123,000 mid-month. On August 1, JPMorgan (NASDAQ: JPM) analysts issued a note saying miners’ July profits were better than any month since the April 2024 halving of the block rewards.
But miners were recently clobbered with fresh concerns over the cost of importing the ASIC mining rigs on which their businesses rely. On August 6, U.S. President Donald Trump announced new 100% tariffs on imported chips and semiconductors. Trump previously announced 30% tariffs on imported ASICs, the overwhelming majority of which are built by Chinese firms.
However, Trump clarified that for chipmakers that have “made a commitment to build or are in the process of building” U.S.-based operations, “there is no tariff.” The big Chinese ASIC manufacturers—Bitmain, MicroBT and, to a lesser extent, Canaan Inc (NASDAQ: CAN)—have either already started U.S. operations or are in the process of establishing them, suggesting miners might dodge a bullet this time.
Two weeks ago, Bitmain’s global business chief Irene Gao said the company planned to open both a new U.S. headquarters and its first stateside assembly line during the current quarter. The facility will be located in either Texas or Florida and hopes to start pumping out made-in-America ASICs early next year.
All well and good, but last week CleanSpark (NASDAQ: CLSK) revealed that in May, the company “began receiving invoices from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) asserting Chinese origin import tariffs on certain miners imported from April 2024 through June 2024.” CleanSpark said the total tariff liability could top $185 million, not counting statutory interest.
CleanSpark says the CBP’s allegations are without merit and the documentation the company received during importation of the rigs “validates non-Chinese origin.” CleanSpark further claims “the seller of the miners has consistently represented to the Company that the country of origin of the mining hardware was not China.” The timing of the imports means the rigs in question would have consisted entirely of Bitmain’s Antminers.
CleanSpark isn’t the only miner to be targeted by the CBP on this issue. In May, IREN (NASDAQ: IREN) revealed that CBP believes the rigs IREN imported into the U.S. between April 2024 and February 2025 were of similar Chinese origin. Like CleanSpark, IREN says it received written documentation from the supplier indicating that the rigs weren’t made in China. If found liable, the tariff top-up could cost IREN $100 million.
Wired recently published details on the “absolute chaos” miners endured this spring in their rush to import new rigs from newly tariffed nations like Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia—countries to which Bitmain and MicroBT shifted some production following tariffs imposed on China during Trump’s first term. In the end, the panic and the millions spent to beat the clock proved unnecessary, as Trump delayed the tariffs by 90 days.
In the short term, Trump’s tariffs could undercut his pledge to make America the world’s mining powerhouse. Ethan Vera, COO of mining solutions firm Luxor Technology, told The Block he expects ASIC manufacturers to ship more rigs “to overseas markets with more favorable import tariffs.”
It will take a while for the U.S.-based operations of Chinese manufacturers to reach critical mass, and Vera suggested U.S. miners might expand operations abroad to take advantage of cheaper rig prices until the U.S. plants catch up.
Eric Trump awaits American Bitcoin Corp nine-figure payday
Trump will likely offer miners some wiggle room, after all, his family’s invested in one now. American Bitcoin Corp (ABTC) was formed this spring via a partnership with Hut 8 (NASDAQ: HUT), with the latter firm supplying “substantially all” of its mining rigs in exchange for 80% of ABTC. Trump’s sons Don Jr. and Eric—the latter serving as ABTC’s ‘chief strategy officer’—and a few others controlling the rest.
ABTC is planning to go public via a stock-for-stock merger with Gryphon Digital Mining (NASDAQ: GRYP), after which Gryphon will rebrand as ABTC. Gryphon shareholders began voting on the plan on August 6 ahead of a special meeting on August 27. The transaction is expected to close in early September.
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings indicate that Eric Trump will hold nearly 367 million new shares of ABTC’s Class B common stock, representing a 9.3% stake in the firm. (Hut 8’s share will fall to 64% post-listing.) Gryphon shares closed trading Monday at $1.29, making Eric’s holdings potentially worth nearly $475 million.
However, Bloomberg reported on July 31 that a recent private sale of existing ABTC stock went off at $0.25 per share, which would result in a still significant but much lower payday for Eric. ABTC is also building a BTC treasury, having raised $220 million via a private placement and purchased 215 BTC as of May 31. On August 7, Hut 8 CEO Asher Genoot revealed that this private placement included participation from Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the brothers behind the Gemini digital asset exchange.
Genoot said the brothers “invested Bitcoin rather than cash” but didn’t quantify the size of the Winklevii investment. The brothers have been significant donors to Trump-related causes, most recently contributing a total of $4 million to MAGA Inc, the Trump-affiliated political action committee.
Q2 earnings: MARA, Riot, Cipher, CleanSpark, Hut 8, Terawulf
There’s a flurry of second-quarter earnings reports to cover, so let’s dive right in.
MARA (NASDAQ: MARA) reported revenue of $238.5 million in the three months ending June 30, up 64% year-on-year (+11.5% from Q1) and a new quarterly record. MARA noted that the surge was “primarily” due to BTC’s spiking fiat price, which also drove profits to $808.2 million from a net loss of $200 million a year ago and a $533 million loss in Q1 (during which BTC’s price tanked).On the earnings call, MARA CEO Fred Thiel expressed skepticism that the flood of digital asset ‘treasury’ companies would enjoy the same inflated share prices that MARA and other early movers have to date. Comparing the treasury boom to 2017’s initial coin offering (ICO) craze, Thiel said “any advantage in any market starts disappearing when you have lots of companies going after it … they can’t all be successful.”
Last month, MARA launched another fundraising effort, looking to raise $850 million, then upsizing that to $950 million in new debt (on top of the $2.25 billion in debt MARA carried as of June 30). MARA said it would use the proceeds to buy more BTC—famed short-seller Jim Chanos has some thoughts on this—and for other general purposes, including strategic acquisitions.
Speaking of, Bloomberg reported Monday that MARA was in “advanced talks” with French utility Électricité de France (EDF) to acquire a 64% stake in Exaion, a high-performance computing (HPC) data center provider. The $168 million deal is reportedly part of MARA’s strategy to build out its AI infrastructure offering. Should the deal proceed, EDF will remain a minority owner of Exaion.
Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: RIOT) reported its Q2 revenue more than doubling year-on-year to $153 million, thanks to spiking BTC prices but also to an improved operating hashrate. Those price gains pushed profits over $219 million versus a $84.5 million loss in the same period last year and a nearly $300 million Q1 loss.
Riot CEO Jason Les appeared to acknowledge the fickle hand of fate in his company’s fortunes. Les said the company would continue “progressively shifting capacity toward high-value data centers,” which promises more consistent returns.
Cipher Mining (NASDAQ: CIFR) reported revenue of $44 million in Q2, a $7 million improvement year-on-year, but a $5 million haircut from Q1. The changes in fair value of its derivative assets led to a net loss of nearly $46 million versus Q1’s $39 million loss.
CleanSpark’s latest quarter saw its revenue rise nearly 91% year-on-year to $198.6 million, while posting a profit of $257.4 million versus a $236.2 million loss a year ago. Despite these cheery numbers, the company announced only four days later that co-founder/CEO Zach Bradford was resigning, his role to be assumed by co-founder/chairman Matt Schultz.
Bradford expressed pride in CleanSpark’s accomplishments but said it was time for him to “transition the role to the next leader and focus on my family.” Schultz said he was stepping into the CEO role “to ensure stability, continuity, and forward momentum … the board believes that now is the right time for a change in leadership as we look to fully capture opportunities available to CleanSpark.”
Hut 8’s mining operations have largely been transferred to ABTC, but for the time being are still being reported via Hut 8. Revenue improved from $35.2 million in Q224 to $41.3 million, most of which ($34.3 million) came from its ‘Compute’ segment, which encompasses mining, GPU-as-a-Service and Data Center Cloud operations.
Hut 8 posted a profit of $137.5 million versus a $72.2 million loss in Q2-24. However, this profit was goosed by a $217.6 million gain in the value of the 10,667 BTC it held at the end of June, meaning the picture would have remained broadly negative absent that value surge.
Finally, TeraWulf (NASDAQ: WULF) reported Q2 revenue of $47.6 million, up one-third year-on-year, but surging costs meant operating losses more than doubled to $15.6 million and net losses widened to $18.4 million from $11.6 million in the same period last year.
July production tallies crown new king
As always, miners’ July 2025 production reports are listed below in descending order of magnitude, and while Bitdeer (NASDAQ: BTDR) has yet to file its July figures, we have a new monthly champion to announce.
- IREN produced 728 BTC in July, a whopping 108 tokens better than June, dethroning longtime champion MARA and producing record monthly revenue of $83.6 million. Average operating hashrate was up more than 10% month-on-month to 45.4 EH/s, while IREN’s AI Cloud Services revenue improved by a modest $100,000 to $2.3 million.
- MARA produced 703 BTC in July, ten fewer than June’s tally, despite a 3% rise in EH/s. MARA’s BTC treasury hit 50,639 tokens as of July 31, 699 tokens more than at the end of June.
- CleanSpark mined 671 BTC in July, 14 fewer than in June, in part due to “periodic load reductions” at its southeast U.S. operations during a heatwave. CleanSpark sold 576 tokens last month, part of its ongoing strategy to “self-fund” operations rather than raise cash or dilute existing shareholders, leaving its treasury at 12,703 tokens.
- Also surging forward in July was Cango (NYSE: CANG), which produced 650.5 BTC, a hefty 200 more than June’s total, as average operating hashrate surged by more than one-third to nearly 41 EH/s. Hashrate will grow further following this week’s $19.5 million purchase of a fully operations 50MW facility in the state of Georgia. Cango says the Georgia addition is “laying the strategic groundwork for a gradual pivot towards supplying energy for (HPC) applications” in a bid to diversify its operations. Cango’s BTC treasury now stands at just under 4,530 tokens.
- Riot Platforms mined 484 BTC in July, an 8% rise from June, despite suffering from the same ‘voluntary curtailments’ of their power access endured by other miners with operations in heat-impacted states. Riot sold 475 BTC last month, leaving its treasury at 19,287 tokens as of July 31.
- BitFuFu (NASDAQ: FUFU) was also in positive territory in July, mining a total of 467 BTC, 22 better than June. Self-mined BTC rose from 58 to 83, while cloud-mining customers dipped by three tokens to 384. Hashrate rose 6.6% to 38.6 EH/s, while BitFuFu’s BTC treasury dipped by eight tokens to 1,784 following “payments made to vendors.”
- Cipher Mining collected 214 BTC in July, up sharply from June’s 160, thanks to a ‘meaningful’ contribution from its Black Pearl Phase I site in Texas. The contribution helped boost month-end operating hashrate by nearly four points to 20.8 EH/s. Cipher sold 52 BTC in July, leaving it with 1,219 in its vaults.
- Hive Digital (TSXV: HIVE) mined 203 BTC in July, a one-quarter improvement over June’s 164, as average hashrate rose nearly two points to 12.8 EH/s. Hive says it remains on target to hit 25 EH/s by November, fueled by its BTC ‘pledge strategy’ that pledged $200 million worth of its held BTC to its equipment supplier (Hive has the option to buy back its BTC at the original pledged price).
- Finally, Canaan produced 89 BTC in July, nearly unchanged from June’s 88, leaving its treasury at 1,511 tokens. Canaan’s month-end operating hashrate (6.2 EH/s) fell for the second straight month, after completing its planned Kazakhstan exit and proactively terminating a hosting deal with “an underperforming site” in Texas.
Watch | Mining Disrupt 2025 Highlights: Profitable trends every miner should know
Recommended for you
