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Bitcoin (BTC) mining profitability increased 2% in July as the price of the world's largest cryptocurrency rose 7% while the network hashrate jumped 5%, investment bank Jefferies said in a research report on Friday.
"We see positive BTC price momentum as most favorable for Galaxy's (GLXY) digital assets business, while miners fight a rising network hashrate," analyst Jonathan Petersen wrote.
The hashrate refers to the total combined computational power used to mine and process transactions on a proof-of-work blockchain, and is a proxy for competition in the industry and mining difficulty. It is measured in exahashes per second (EH/s).
U.S.-listed mining companies mined 3,622 bitcoin in July, versus 3,379 coins the month before, the report said, and these firms accounted for 26% of the total network compared to 25% in June.
IREN (IREN) mined the most bitcoin, with 728 tokens, followed by MARA Holdings (MARA) with 703 BTC, the bank noted.
Jefferies said MARA's energized hashrate remains the largest of the sector, at 58.9 EH/s at the end of July, with CleanSpark (CLSK) second with 50 EH/s.
Revenue per exahash/second also increased. "A hypothetical one EH/s fleet of BTC miners would have generated ~$57k/day in revenue during July, vs ~$56k/day in June and ~$50k a year ago," the analyst wrote.
