{"id":380476,"date":"2025-03-09T07:25:54","date_gmt":"2025-03-09T01:55:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/how-analysts-are-rating-bitcoin-miners-pivot-to-ai-and-chip-manufacturing-crypto-news\/"},"modified":"2025-03-09T07:29:55","modified_gmt":"2025-03-09T01:59:55","slug":"how-analysts-are-rating-bitcoin-miners-pivot-to-ai-and-chip-manufacturing-crypto-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/how-analysts-are-rating-bitcoin-miners-pivot-to-ai-and-chip-manufacturing-crypto-news\/","title":{"rendered":"How Analysts Are Rating Bitcoin Miners\u2019 Pivot to AI and Chip Manufacturing – Crypto News"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Casual observers of Bitcoin miners\u2019 Q4 earnings<\/a> could be forgiven thinking it\u2019s been nothing but smooth sailing for the industry.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s no ignoring the fact that publicly traded Bitcoin miners lost $23 billion off their collective market capitalization in the past month, according to a recent JP Morgan report.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not all that surprising given the price of Bitcoin<\/a> began February above $102,000 and then sank as low as $78,000 while markets were tormented by President Donald Trump\u2019s trade war talk<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Apart from hoping Bitcoin\u2019s price goes up, stock analysts told Decrypt<\/i> that they\u2019re keeping an eye on data center deals, energy costs, and how miners are making their existing fleets more efficient.<\/p>\n

At the start of the week, Hut 8 reported<\/a> $162.4 million revenue for 2024\u2014a 69% increase compared to 2023, the company said<\/a>. But that\u2019s not why Mike Colonnese, a managing director and senior crypto analyst at H.C. Wainwright, said he\u2019s feeling optimistic about the firm.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think Hut 8 is close to signing a major HPC\/AI deal with a hyperscaler,\u201d he told Decrypt<\/i>. \u201cThe company would build and operate an HPC\/AI data center for a client in a colocation type of model where Hut would generate long-term high margin revenues from a tenant for managing the infrastructure in which that tenant\u2019s GPUs are deployed to run AI workloads.\u201d<\/p>\n

To put a cherry on top, the company also noted in its report that it\u2019s managed to slash its energy costs by 30%. That helped it create an 8 point increase in gross margin per Bitcoin mined, when comparing Q4 2024 to the previous year.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s no easy feat to pull off the same year the Bitcoin network underwent its fourth halving event<\/a> and slashed the block reward paid to miners by half.<\/p>\n

In general, Colonnese said he thinks mining costs will rise in 2025, as network difficulty continues to increase alongside growth in the network hash rate and there aren\u2019t significant upgrades to the most popular mining rigs on the horizon.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, I expect BTC price appreciation to outpace growth in difficulty,\u201d he added, \u201cso miners should benefit from a significant improvement in mining economics in 2025.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nishant Sharma agrees it\u2019s critical to watch how miners manage their overhead, but uses what he\u2019s coined hashcost<\/a>. It\u2019s a calculation of the miners\u2019 fleet efficiency and the money it takes to keep Bitcoin mining rigs running.<\/p>\n

Sharma, formerly of Bitcoin mining rig behemoth Bitmain, is the founder of \u200b\u200bcommunications and research firm for the mining industry Blocksbridge Capital.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis provides a clearer picture of how cost-effectively the company mines Bitcoin,\u201d he told Decrypt<\/i>. \u201cHowever, when assessing a mining company’s stock, investors should look beyond just mining efficiency.\u201d<\/p>\n

He pointed out that most mining companies, like Hut 8, have already diversified their revenue streams by offering data center space to AI and high-performance computing (HPC) clients. But that\u2019s not the only way forward.<\/p>\n

Others, like Core Scientific, have been working to design their own ASIC chip. \u201cThese strategic moves introduce additional factors that investors must weigh based on their investment thesis and outlook,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

An ASIC, or application-specific integrated circuit, is the all-important chip that optimizes hardware specifically for crypto mining. It\u2019s what makes mining rigs head and shoulders more efficient than mining crypto with a personal computer.<\/p>\n

Core Scientific announced in 2024<\/a> that it was teaming up with Jack Dorsey\u2019s Block Inc. to design ASIC chips. Investors will get to see those chips in action soon enough.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not expect to increase or refresh our Bitcoin mining fleet until we procure the new Block ASIC chips in the second half of 2025,\u201d said Denise Sterling, Core Scientific\u2019s chief financial officer, during the company\u2019s earnings call last month.<\/p>\n

To hear Max Shannon tell it, Core Scientfic\u2019s earnings call was otherwise unremarkable. Shannon is an analyst at crypto investment firm CoinShares.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the mining front, performance was unimpressive and, in fact, slightly deteriorated,\u201d he told Decrypt<\/i>. \u201cHowever, the high-performance computing (HPC) segment delivered strong results, with notable client interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was referring to Core Scientific\u2019s deal with AI hyperscaler CoreWeave, which earlier this week announced a $1.7 billion acquisition deal<\/a>. Just last month, the two companies finalized a $1.2 billion expansion<\/a> at a Texas data center.<\/p>\n

He said he\u2019s also been keeping an eye on Bitdeer, another Bitcoin miner that\u2019s dipping into the manufacturing side of things. Its SEALminer A2 rigs have already captured an estimated 5% of market share based on projected future hashrate growth, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe this could increase further over time,\u201d Shannon said. \u201cThis segment offers greater operational flexibility, as the company can utilize machines at cost rather than purchasing at market prices, reducing expenditure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Edited by Guillermo Jimenez<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

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Casual observers of Bitcoin miners\u2019 Q4 earnings could be forgiven thinking it\u2019s been nothing but smooth sailing for the industry. But there\u2019s no ignoring the fact that publicly traded Bitcoin miners lost $23 billion off their collective market capitalization in the past month, according to a recent JP Morgan report. It\u2019s not all that surprising […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380477,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[230,225,221,227,226,228,229,60,223,224,222],"class_list":["post-380476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency","tag-brave","tag-coinbase","tag-crypto","tag-decentralised","tag-decentralized","tag-decentralized-exchange","tag-erc-20","tag-featured","tag-meme-coin","tag-robinhood","tag-solana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380476"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":380478,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380476\/revisions\/380478"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dripp.zone\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}