In brief
- Bitcoin miners were struggling earlier this year, as the price of the leading digital coin took a hit.
- But BTC is recently surging, hitting a new all-time high mark in May and remaining close to that level.
- Miners are minting more coins, with Nasdaq-listed Bitdeer producing 18% more in May than the month before.
Bitcoin miner Bitdeer in May minted 196 BTC, an increase of over 18% from April—the latest monthly gain registered by a publicly traded miner as the industry slowly recovers from headwinds caused by a dip in the leading cryptocurrency’s price and rising difficulty.
Nasdaq-listed Bitdeer (BTDR) reported Wednesday that it also increased its hashrate to 13.6 exahash per second from 12.4 the previous month, due to new mining machinery. Exahash is a measurement of computational power.
Data from Farside Investors shows that four Bitcoin top miners—CleanSpark, MARA, Riot Platforms, and HIVE—minted more BTC in May than in April. Data for five other miners was not yet available.
The Bitcoin mining industry has grown more challenging this year, as competition has increased for smaller rewards but the price of the digital asset dropped, making it harder for mining operations to cover costs. After last year’s halving, miner rewards for verifying transactions on the blockchain sank from 6.25 Bitcoin to 3.215, or about $340,000 worth based on current prices.
Top miners were forced to sell more coins than usual to make ends meet. In April, Bitcoin’s price dipped below $75,000 per coin, falling more than 20% over the course of a month as President Trump’s tariff announcements rocked global markets.
But a surge in the price of the leading cryptocurrency may be helping. Bitcoin broke a new price record in May of $111,814, and is now just shy of 3% of that high mark, CoinGecko data shows.
Mining operations are typically large warehouses full of specialized computers racing to add blocks to the cryptocurrency’s blockchain.
Blocks are added to Bitcoin’s ledger of transactions, and miners are rewarded for their speed with newly minted digital coins. But the industry requires a lot of equipment and energy, and the odds of success are low.
Miners are scattered across the world, but the U.S. has the highest percentage of global hashrate.
President Trump campaigned on a ticket to help the industry and said he wanted all future BTC to be minted in the country.
Edited by James Rubin
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