The combined market capitalization of 14 U.S.-listed Bitcoin (BTC) miners tracked by JPMorgan (JPM) fell 25% in March, marking the third-worst monthly performance on record, the bank said on Tuesday.

Only one stock, Stronghold Digital Mining (SDIG), outperformed Bitcoin (BTC) last month, the report said. High-performance computing (HPC) miners continued to underperform pure-play miners for the second month in a row.

“We note that current valuations are at their lowest relative to block rewards since the FTX crash in fall 2023,” analysts Reginald Smith and Charles Pierce wrote.

The network's average hashrate increased slightly over the month to 816 exahashes per second (EH/s), the report said. Hashrate represents the total computing power used to mine and process transactions on a proof-of-work blockchain, and serves as an indicator of competition in the industry and mining difficulty.

Revenues and profitability in the mining sector have declined.

“We estimate that Bitcoin miners earned an average of $47,300 per EH/s in daily block reward revenue in March, down 13% from February,” the bank said. Gross daily block reward revenue declined 22% month-on-month to $23,000 per EH/s.

Stronghold Digital outperformed the sector last month, posting a 2% decline. Cipher Mining (CIFR) was the worst performer, falling 45%.

Read more: Bitcoin network hashrate increases slightly in March as mining economy weakens: JPMorgan

Source: cryptonews.net