HIVE Digital Technologies (TSXV: HIVE) mined 282.8 Bitcoins in December 2023, representing an increase of 2.36 per cent over its November total of 276.3.
The company said on Friday that it maintained a 3.95 exahash hashrate of bitcoin mining capacity on average for December 2023.
On a daily basis, HIVE produced an average of 9.1 BTC in December, amounting to approximately 1 per cent of the global network’s total production. It also concluded December with a mining capacity of 4.08 EH/s, which included both ASIC and GPU BTC hashrate, and this level remained consistent with the previous month.
The company’s Bitcoin position at the end of December 2023 stood at 1,707 BTC. This marked an increase of 80 BTC compared to the previous month.
The New Brunswick facility is currently operating at 1.8 EH/s while undergoing final maintenance on the substation. The company anticipates the facility to return to two EH/s in January 2024. It’s worth noting that prior to maintenance, the peak total global hash rate while operating was 4.3 EH/s.
Bitcoin’s global network mining difficulty remains volatile.
Network difficulty factors influence Hive’s gross profit margins. As of December 1, the bitcoin network difficulty stood at 68 terrahashes (T) and reached an all-time high of 72 T by December 31. Consequently, the bitcoin mining difficulty increased by about 6 per cent over the course of December compared to the beginning of the month.
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As Bitcoin prices decrease some miners may shut down
The publicly available statistic for bitcoin network difficulty reflects the total number of online bitcoin miners. Analyzing a company’s gross profit margins involves considering this metric along with the number of bitcoins produced. These data can be found on various websites, including the Blockchain website.
The difficulty increases as miners mine more bitcoin and the daily bitcoin block reward is distributed among a growing number of miners.
This results in a smaller portion for each miner. Conversely, when bitcoin prices decrease, some miners may shut down due to financial losses, reducing the overall network difficulty.
Miners with the lowest production costs, achieved through efficient machines and lower energy costs, can continue operating during these volatile cycles. Not all miners maintain continuous production, leading some to produce less bitcoin than expected relative to their advertised hash rate. Hive intends to stop some of its operations if spot energy prices become uneconomical. This will leave a portion of its total gross hash rate unused.
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