ETH2.0 cut crypto miner's gross margin by half
And separately, a bizarre story of crawl space mining
Quirky news of the week: A former town employee in Cohasset, Massachusetts is charged with stealing electricity from a local middle school to power a secret bitcoin mine hidden in a crawl space in the school. He was alleged to have run the operation from April to December 2021, a period between China’s mining ban and bitcoin’s all-time high. Classic bull market story.
On another topic: three public mining firms have so far released their Q4’22 earnings, with HIVE being the latest this week. Q4’22 was the first quarter after Ethereum switched to proof-of-stake, which had a notable impact on crypto mining operations like HIVE, as reported by CoinDesk.
Indeed, in the month prior to the ETH2.0 switch, about 40% of HIVE’s crypto mining revenues came from Ethereum mining. Although HIVE has since then switched to mining Ethereum Classic, that strategy didn’t help significantly improve its monthly BTC and BTC equivalent productions. (See here).
As such, HIVE’s gross mining profit in Q4’22 was down 77% QoQ, much more than that of the two other peers, according to data summarized by TheMinerMag. HIVE’s gross margin percentage also dropped from 54% in Q3’22 to 25% in Q4’22. With more earnings calls for Q4 and fiscal year 2022 approaching, subscribe to TheMinerMag’s news feed to stay up to date.
Regulation news
Montana Senate Passes Bill Protecting Crypto Miners - CoinDesk
Hardin County Approves Two Crypto Mining Sites - The Gazette
Crypto Miners Await Verdict on Exclusion from IRS Broker Reporting Rule - Bloomberg
Financial news
Bitcoin Mining Consulting Firm Sabre56 Raises $35M to Build 150MW of Hosting Sites - CoinDesk
Bitmain Partner BitFuFu Starts Marketplace for Crypto Mining Rig Coupons - CoinDesk
Corporate news
Luxor Partners with Southeast Asia Mining Firm, Seeks to Attract Capital - The Block
Bitcoin Miner Mawson Breaks Ground in Sharon - Businessjournaldaily
Luxor Mining Acquires Ordinalhub amid Bitcoin-based NFTs Hype - Cointelegraph
Hardware and Infrastructure
Major Japanese Utility Works With Local Hardware Maker to Capitalize on Excess Power With Crypto Mining - CoinDesk
Mining Difficulty up 9.95% with More Machines Coming Online amid Recent Rally - The Block
Feature
Crypto and Bitcoin Miners Rebrand and Diversify to Survive: A Look at Their New Strategies - CoinDesk
Bitcoin Miners Flocking to Texas Want to Stabilize ERCOT's Volatile Renewables - S&P Global
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