Bitcoin miners, fresh from the halving apocalypse of 2024, charging into this November, like extras in a Mad Max sequel, rigs humming, dreams of glory blazing.
Then reality hit, revenues cratered, marking four straight months of pain.
JPMorgan’s Reginald Smith and Charles Pearce laid it bare in their Monday dispatch, painting a sector gasping under competition and limp markets.
The main insight? Profitability’s in freefall, yet the network’s computational beast barely blinked.
Decreasing profits, no fee revenues
The first trial was hard, average daily block reward gross profit decreased 26% month-over-month, kicking off a slide from late summer.
Miners earned a measly $41,400 per EH/s daily, down 14% from October, 20% year-over-year.
Post-halving, block rewards halved to 3.125 BTC, and transaction fees? Ghost town, no congestion spikes to save the day. Energy costs and hardware gnaw like relentless Jawas in the desert.
Up, or down
Experts say the ordeal peaked with hashrate, that throbbing pulse of proof-of-work power, dipping 1% to 1,074 EH/s after October’s all-time high.
A whisper of a retreat after endless expansion, signaling cooling competition.
Public miners took a $11 billion gut punch, their combined market cap slumped 16% to $59 billion.
For example, Bitdeer plunged 40% on weak results and expense woes.
On the other hand, Cipher Mining bucked the trend, up 9% thanks to its Fluidstack power grab boosting HPC dreams.
Deep in the abyss, whispers of reset echoed. Aggressive 2025 expansions bet on Bitcoin moonshots and fee bonanzas, but subdued activity and old rigs squeezed margins.
Marginal players hit pause, hashrate stabilizing near peaks shows resilience. Heading into 2026, Bitcoin’s spot price is the Excalibur, and the stone’s grip is legendary.
Consolidation and efficiency
Luckily, the road home glimmers faintly. Analysts eye consolidation, cost-slashes, efficiency pivots.
Miners morph into lean machines, chasing cheap power and green cred amid rising difficulty.
Yes, JPMorgan flags economics strained but the thing is that the network is unbreakable.
Will BTC price roar back, or do rigs rust in the wasteland?
These digital prospectors grip tight, survival’s a sassy gamble in crypto’s infinite improbability drive.
Cryptocurrency and Web3 expert, founder of Kriptoworld
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With years of experience covering the blockchain space, András delivers insightful reporting on DeFi, tokenization, altcoins, and crypto regulations shaping the digital economy.
