Bitcoin miners continue to face challenges, with 14 top public companies in the space collectively having their worst month on record in March, according to investment bank JP Morgan.
In a Tuesday report, the Wall Street giant said that the Bitcoin miners it tracks, which include the likes of MARA and Core Scientific, collectively shed 25%—or about $6 billion—of their value market cap last month.
Analysts at the bank Reginald Smith and Charles Pearce added in their report that companies with high-powered computing exposure “generally underperformed pure-play miners for the second consecutive month.” Some Bitcoin miners have branched out to the AI data center industry in a bid to earn more cash.
The data from the investment bank comes after the 14 miners also struggled in February, when they also lost over 20%—again around $6 billion—of their combined market cap.
President Donald Trump promised to help the digital asset industry on the campaign trail, and specifically spoke about the mining space, claiming that he wanted all future Bitcoin to be 100% American-made.
The industry is far from easy, though, as miners told Decrypt at last week’s annual Mining Disrupt conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, as the price of Bitcoin dips while mining difficulty steadily rises.
Bitcoin miners are typically industrial operations of warehouses full of computers that work to secure the network. Miners are rewarded in newly minted coins for processing blocks on the decentralized payment network, but when the price of BTC drops, businesses can struggle to cover their costs.
Bitcoin is down nearly 22% from its all-time high of nearly $109,000—which it hit when President Trump was inaugurated on January 20.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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