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Cryptocurrency News Articles
Bitcoin Miners Choose Between Hodling and AI as Halving Squeezes Margins
Oct 21, 2024 at 12:54 pm
Six months after rewards for validating transactions on the Bitcoin network were reduced by half, crypto mining companies are choosing between two divergent paths to remain viable.
Crypto mining companies are pivoting toward two distinct strategies to remain viable following a halving of rewards for validating transactions on the Bitcoin network.
Some publicly traded miners, including MARA Holdings (NASDAQ:MARA), Riot Platforms (NASDAQ:RIOT), and CleanSpark (NASDAQ:CLSK), are choosing to hold the Bitcoin they produce, anticipating an increase in the digital asset’s value.
Meanwhile, an increasing number of companies are ramping up spending on developing data centers to power artificial intelligence applications.
This industry bifurcation has intensified since the April software update in the Bitcoin blockchain. The preprogrammed event, known as the halving, reduces the Bitcoin reward, which serves as the primary revenue source for miners, by 50% every four years. This measure aims to maintain the hard cap of 21 million Bitcoin and prevent the cryptocurrency from becoming inflationary.
“With the halving putting a squeeze on profit margins, one of the few strategies available to retain investors is for miners to hold onto the Bitcoin they’ve mined, betting on future price appreciation while they tap into equity or debt financing,” said Wolfie Zhao, an analyst at research firm TheMinerMag. “By avoiding the immediate sale of Bitcoin at a loss, they can keep potential losses unrealized and position themselves for gains if a bull market materializes.”
As Bitcoin has rallied by over 60% this year while shares of most companies have underperformed, traders seem to be deciding which strategy will succeed, with those embracing AI posting the largest gains.
Among the largest publicly traded Bitcoin miners, those that are “hodling” — industry slang for holding the cryptocurrency for the long term — include MARA and Riot. Their shares have declined by 20% and 36%, respectively, in 2023.
On the other hand, Core Scientific (NASDAQ:CORZ), which emerged from bankruptcy in January, has seen its stock rise almost fourfold since announcing multibillion dollar contracts with AI upstart CoreWeave. The miner will convert some of its data centers to host graphics processing units that can generate high-performance computing power for AI applications. TeraWulf (NYSE:WULF), whose stock has more than doubled this year, is also developing AI data center space, although it is a fairly small-cap stock.
Shares of other Bitcoin miners that are dedicating more resources to AI, such as Iris Energy (NASDAQ:IREN) and Bit Digital (NYSE:BTBT), tend to trade at higher levels than some of their peers that are doubling down on holding the Bitcoin they mine.
It remains to be seen which strategy will ultimately be more successful. While AI is currently very popular, there have been signs of cooling interest in the sector. There are also questions about whether some of the Bitcoin miners have the necessary resources and commitment to join the capital-intensive AI race.
In the meantime, the Bitcoin-holding miners have become better at timing the cycles of the crypto market following the industry meltdown of the past few years. For some companies, especially large-scale operators like MARA and CleanSpark, Bitcoin mining is still profitable at the gross margin level.
“Our view is that pure-play Bitcoin mining has a place in the market currently with the respect to generating economic value from growing capacity to mine Bitcoin,” said Paul Golding, a senior analyst at Macquarie Capital USA. He has “outperform” ratings on MARA, Riot, Core Scientific, Iris Energy, CleanSpark, and Cipher Mining (NYSE:CIFR).
According to Golding, advances in hardware efficiency and potential appreciation in Bitcoin are among the factors that can keep miners viable from a gross margin perspective even after the halving.
As Bitcoin has risen again following the 2022 market crash, miners have started borrowing and issuing more shares once more. This time around, companies like MARA are even using the proceeds to buy crypto, following the buy-and-hold strategy that helped MicroStrategy (NASDAQ:MSTR) transform from an obscure enterprise software maker into the world's leading Bitcoin proxy.
“In a rising Bitcoin price environment, it is going to be an extremely successful strategy, but it’ll be a disaster if Bitcoin prices plummet,” said Ethan Vera, chief operating officer at Luxor Technology. “You will continue to see negative profits and they are hiding how bad the industry is right now and how bad their operations are by diluting shareholders and buying newer machines.”
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