The decline in production in February did not affect the profitability of mining

The income of seven mining companies in the US in February decreased by 8.6%. Companies attribute this to purely calculated factors and increased the hashrate in February by 6%.

As reasons for the decline in nominal BTC mining mining giants
called a short month, snow storms and an increase in the hashrate, and hence the complexity. One of the reasons for the decline in bitcoin production has purely calendar reasons. Mining works 24×7, and a shorter month reduces the formal monthly yield.

Bitcoin mining at CleanSpark (CLSK) fell 10% to 276 BTC (and February is three days shorter than January, which is about the same 10%). At the same time, the company claims a daily production of 10.15 BTC, therefore, with a normal month, it would maintain the January productivity of more than 300 BTC. Bitcoin mining Hive Blockchain (HIVE) in February decreased by 8% to 244 BTC, thus the daily performance even increased slightly, to 8.7 BTC per day.

In total, US public mining companies mined about 2,890 BTC in February, which is 11.6% of all bitcoins mined in the world. This is 9.7% lower than in January, according to Jefferies analyst Jonathan Petersen.

The U.S. went through a series of winter storms that caused major Texas companies such as Marathon Digital, Riot Blockchain, Rhodium, Argo Blockchain (ARBK) and other miners to shut down mining to protect the region’s power grid. Argo and Gem Mining said that the decline in Bitcoin mining in February, among other reasons, is due to the intention to reduce the load on power lines. Canada’s Bitfarms (BITF) has also faced government cutbacks due to storms.

“As planned, the seasonal power outage programs at our farms in Quebec affected production in February, but to a lesser extent than in January,” Bitfarms CEO Emiliano Grodzki said in a statement.

The third event that hurt miner performance in February was the rise in Bitcoin hashrate and difficulty. If on February 1, the average hash rate in the Bitcoin network for 7 days was 191 ECH / s, then on February 17 it jumped to 220 ECH / s, Luxor Technologies analytical service reports.

The increase in hashrate resulted in a 4.8% increase in mining difficulty in February, so miners mined less BTC per hashrate. At the beginning of March, the difficulty dropped by about 1.5%, and the hash rate was about 192 EX/s, which is positive for miners this month.

However, despite increasing competition, rising difficulty, and falling Bitcoin prices, mining remains a very profitable business. At the same time, miners in the US still achieve a margin of about 60-70%. This is a far cry from the near 90% margin peak seen last year. It is worth noting that not everything is going smoothly in the US mining industry. Last week, a bill to suspend BTC mining in New York State received additional support from two more lawmakers.