Public mining companies have seen a decline in Bitcoin production in April following the halving event. Reports indicate that major Bitcoin miners, including Bitfarms, Cipher, CleanSpark, Core Scientific, Riot, and Terawulf, have all been affected. However, the impact of the halving was temporarily mitigated by the robust Bitcoin fee market.
Hut 8, a prominent Bitcoin mining company in North America, reported a significant decrease in BTC production for April. In their monthly update, Hut 8 revealed that they mined 148 BTC with their proprietary mining fleet, a 36% decrease compared to March. This decline resulted in a realized hashrate of 3.44 EH/s, a substantial drop of 51% from Hut 8’s peak in December.
While the halving event did have an impact, Hut 8 attributed the decline in production primarily to the relocation of proprietary miners from the Kearney and Granbury sites, which were purchased by Marathon. Marathon accelerated the process of vacating the tenants, leading to disruptions in Hut 8’s mining operations. Hut 8’s CEO, Asher Genoot, stated that the team successfully removed over 25,000 miners in just eight days in April to minimize downtime.
The relocated miners found a new home at the Salt Creek site in Texas, which became operational within three months. The site has a power capacity of 63 megawatts. Hut 8 also announced that its total self-mining, hosting, and managed power capacity expanded to over one gigawatt in April, partially due to the energization of a 215-megawatt site in Ward County, Texas.
Bitcoin miners, including Riot Platforms, have been adjusting their operations after the halving event, which reduced mining rewards. Markus Thielen, the head of research at 10x Research, estimated that Bitcoin miners have the potential to liquidate approximately $5 billion worth of BTC after the halving. CoinShares analysis suggests that Riot, TeraWulf, and CleanSpark are among the best-positioned companies to weather the upcoming challenges.
