Bitcoin Miners' Market Cap Hit a Record in September: JPMorgan

The total market cap of the fourteen U.S-listed bitcoin (BTC) miners that JPMorgan tracks exceeded $50 billion for the first time last month, the Wall Street bank said in a report Wednesday. The combined market cap of these mining stocks rose 43% month-on-month to $56 billion in September, the bank noted. The move was driven by a number of announcements, including Cipher Mining's (CIFR) HPC colocation deal with Fluidstack, and IREN's (IREN) expansion of its Cloud Services business, the report said. The BItcoin hashrate also rose. The monthly average network hashrate "increased ~82 EH/s (+9%) m/m to an average of 1,031 EH/s in September," analysts Reginald Smith and Charles Pearce wrote. The hashrate refers to the total combined computational power used to mine and process transactions on a proof-of-work blockchain. Mining profitability fell for the second month in a row as the hashrate exceeded 1000 EH/s. The bank's analysts estimated that miners "earned an average of $49,700 per EH/s in daily block reward revenue in September, down 10% from August." Daily block reward gross profit also slumped 17% from the month prior. Bitfarms (BITF) outperformed the group with a 110% gain, while Cango (CANG) underperformed with an 11% decline. Twelve of the fourteen miners in the bank's coverage outerformed bitcoin in September, the report added. Read more: Cipher Is the Latest Bitcoin Miner to Pivot to AI; Price Target Raised to $16: Canaccord