Bitcoin (BTC) mining stocks have performed mixed in the first two weeks of April, with operators focused solely on mining outperforming those in the high-performance computing (HPC) space, a JPMorgan (JPM) report said on Wednesday.

Only MARA Holdings (MARA) and CleanSpark (CLSK) managed to outperform the largest cryptocurrency during this period, while miners using HPC for applications including AI, such as Bitdeer (BTDR), TeraWulf (WULF), IREN (IREN), and Riot Platforms (RIOT), performed worse.

The bank noted that March was a good month for miners registered in the US. They increased their capacity by 15 exahashes per second and mined more tokens. The first two weeks of April were not so favorable.

“Network hashrate growth outpaced operator growth in the US, and the average price of bitcoin declined in the first half of April, putting downward pressure on the mining economy,” analysts Reginald Smith and Charles Pierce said.

The bank estimates that shares of U.S.-listed miners are currently trading at about 1.2 times their pro rata share of the four-year block reward, the lowest in two years.

The report found that miners earned about $41,500 in daily block rewards on EH/s in the first two weeks of the month, down 12% from March.

The bank also noted that the network hashrate has increased by 85 EH/s since the beginning of the month to an average of 900 EH/s. The hashrate represents the total combined computing power used to mine and process transactions on a proof-of-work blockchain and serves as an indicator of industry competition and mining difficulty.

The combined market capitalization of the 13 U.S.-listed Bitcoin miners the bank tracks fell 2% in April to $16.9 billion.

Read more: Bitcoin mining profitability fell 7.4% in March on price and transaction fee declines: Jefferies

Source: cryptonews.net