Bitcoin mining stocks MARA, CleanSpark rise as network difficulty eases

Multiple Bitcoin mining stocks are ending the week in the green as Friday markets opened, as network difficulty and Bitcoin price put a light breeze behind ailing Bitcoin mining revenues. Network difficulty is down nearly 7% since the beginning of November, pushing a miners towards more profitable levels, per Hashrate Index data.

MARA (Nasdaq: MARA) gained 11.97% on the week, followed by CleanSpark’s (Nasdaq: CLSK) 11.75%, and Core Scientific’s (Nasdaq: CORZ) 5.56%, and Hut 8’s (Nasdaq: HUT) 1.04%. On the other hand, American Bitcoin (Nasdaq: ABTC) dropped 42.38% after an investor unlock, while IREN (Nasdaq: IREN) slipped 4.13% following an announced convertible note.

Overall, most stocks are in the green when looking at the year. IREN led year-to-date performance with a 357% gain, followed by Terawulf at 154% and Hut at 104%. CleanSpark is up 53%, Riot 48%, Core Scientific 18%, and American Bitcoin some 12%. MARA is the only company in negative territory, down 28% for the year.

Hashprice dropped below $40 per petahash per day as of Wednesday, placing operator revenue at a new low. The figure continued to fall even after a decrease in mining difficulty.

CoinMetrics reported that the average machine operating on the network runs at 32 joules per terahash. At a power cost of $0.05 per kilowatt-hour, the break-even hashcost at that efficiency is about $38.40 per petahash per day. The numbers indicate that many miners are close to or below profitability and may need to depend on cash reserves or reduce operations to manage costs.

Monthly mining reports for major US miners showed typical results for mining. Riot and CleanSpark reported 428 and 587 Bitcoin mined in November, respectively. Meanwhile, Bitcoin miner Cango mined 546 amounts last month, slightly lower than the month prior.

In other news, Bitcoin miner and ASIC manufacturer Bitdeer (Nasdaq: BTDR) was the target of a fresh lawsuit, citing management’s alleged miscommunications over its new unit’s performance and production timelines.