According to The Block, as of June 15th, the market value of publicly listed Bitcoin mining companies in the United States has reached a record high of $22.8 billion. With the rise in internet hash rate and the diversification opportunities in artificial intelligence data centers, US mining stocks saw a rebound in the first half of June.
Morgan Stanley analysts Reginald Smith and Charles Pearce wrote in a report to clients on Monday (the 17th) that 14 US-listed mining stocks rebounded in the first half of the month, led by Core Scientific, TeraWulf, and IREN with gains of 117%, 80%, and 70% respectively. Argo Blockchain was the only mining company that saw a decline in stock price in June, dropping by 7%, while Bitcoin fell by 3% during the same period.
Marathon Digital is currently the largest publicly listed mining company in the US with a market value of $5.3 billion, followed by CleanSpark and Riot Platforms with market values of $4 billion and $3 billion respectively.
Earlier this month, AI cloud service provider CoreWeave proposed to acquire Core Scientific for $1.6 billion, a 55% premium over the market price, but the acquisition was rejected. Prior to this, the two companies had reached a 12-year, $3.5 billion cooperation agreement, allowing CoreWeave to host its AI-related services in Core Scientific’s data centers.
Morgan Stanley analysts stated that in response to the agreement between Core Scientific and CoreWeave, the industry’s total market value has increased by 24% since the end of May, approximately $4.4 billion. In recent months, other mining companies such as Hut 8 and IREN have also taken similar AI diversification measures to increase revenue following the Bitcoin reward halving in April.
US-listed mining companies increase their share of total network hash rate
Analysts believe that another factor contributing to the growth of Bitcoin mining market value is the increasing share of network hash rate by US Bitcoin miners.
According to data from The Block, aside from the initial increase in transaction fee rewards due to Runes-related speculation, the network hash rate of Bitcoin has decreased by about 5% since the halving event, with the seven-day moving average hash rate dropping from 629.44 EH/s to 598.08 EH/s. However, the relative hash rate of US-listed mining companies continues to rise, reaching 23.8% market share, higher than 22.9% in May and 21% in April, as more inefficient operations have exited the network post-halving.
Analysts added that, despite the overall decline in hash rate, the hash price of Bitcoin (an indicator measuring how much revenue miners can expect to earn from a specific amount of hash rate) is still about 15% lower than the bear market low in December 2022 and 45% lower than pre-halving levels, which they deem “unsustainable.”
