Bitcoin’s hashrate growth to slow down in April?
Shrinking PP&E spending and miner shipments among main factors
Bitcoin’s one-day mean hashrate touched 398EH/s last weekend, which got people on social media speculating why. This is another reminder that bitcoin’s hashrate is typically back-calculated from block productions and luck plays a bigger role in a short period than in a longer timeframe. Hence, one-day data isn’t that accurate.
Nevertheless, bitcoin’s monthly average hashrate did grow significantly year-to-date from 273EH/s in January to 330EH/s in March. However, metrics analyzed by TheMinerMag suggest that the growth could slow down in the coming months.
The net spending on property, plant and equipment (PP&E) of North American public mining companies was already shrinking in Q3’22 based on data compiled below from 18 companies. Although only 12 of them have disclosed cash flow activities for Q4’22 so far, it’s apparent that the trend continued. In an apple-to-apple comparison, the same 12 companies incurred $872 million, $625 million, $206 million and $123 million in net PP&E spending from Q1 to Q4, respectively.
We showed in a previous issue that bitcoin miner shipments by sea to the U.S. surged in September 2022 and January 2023 – each was just about six months since the end of Q1’22 and Q2’22, respectively. Those were the two quarters when public miners incurred nearly $2 billion in net PP&E spending.
Based on that six-month lead time, the shrinking spending on PP&E in the second half of 2022 suggests the miner shipments to the U.S. could slow down in the coming months and hence slow down the hashrate contribution from the U.S. to the network.
If bitcoin doesn’t surge to well over $35,000, then there is also less chance that the older generation of equipment becomes profitable and gets turned on again.
Regulation News
Texas Senate bill seeks to regulate Bitcoin miners and their electricity consumption - CBS Austin
Council advances operating permit application from cryptocurrency mining company - Niagara Gazette
Finance News
Bitdeer valued at $1.18B as SPAC merger inches closer - Link
Galaxy Digital increased bitcoin mining revenue to $8.5M in Q4 despite market tumble - Link
Hardware & Infrastructure News
TeraWulf Reports 146% Increase in Revenue As It Ramps Up Operations - CoinDesk
Stronghold Raises Year-End Hashrate Guidance to 4 EH/s - CoinDesk
Feature
Bitcoin miners report best monthly revenues in 10 months - The Block
'Skull of Satoshi' Artist Says He Was 'Wrong' About Bitcoin Mining - Decrypt
Future of Bitcoin Mining in Paraguay | Video - CoinDesk - CoinDesk
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