Bitcoin (BTC) Mining Companies with High-Performance Computing (HPC) Exposure Underperformed BTC in April: JPMorgan

Bitcoin (BTC) mining companies with high-performance computing (HPC) exposure underperformed the world's largest cryptocurrency for the third month in a row in April

Bitcoin (BTC) mining companies with high-performance computing (HPC) exposure underperformed the world's largest cryptocurrency for the third month in a role in April, Wall Street bank JPMorgan said in a research report on Thursday.

Some bitcoin miners have pivoted into new business areas, such as offering HPC services to the fast growing artificial intelligence (AI) market, to diversify revenue streams and reduce their dependence on crypto.

"We note miners with HPC exposure (IREN, RIOT, WULF, HUT) underperformed BTC performance for the third consecutive month," analysts Reginald Smith and Charles Pearce wrote.

They were referring to Irvine, California-based bitcoin miner i3 (NASDAQ:IREN), which also provides rendering and visualization services to the entertainment industry.

Also lagging was Texas-based bitcoin miner and renewable energy firm Block (NYSE:SQ)Point (NASDAQ:BTSE), which provides cloud-based HPC services to the AI market.

Those miners have also been diversifying into new revenue streams.

Bitcoin mining profitability fell in April as the network hashrate increased.

Daily block reward revenue declined 6% from March, the bank said, while the monthly average hashrate rose around 56 exahashes per second (EH/s), or 6% month-on-month, to 872 EH/s in April.

"This was the second largest sequential increase in the monthly average network hashrate on record," the authors 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.

The total market cap of the 13 U.S.-listed mining stocks that the bank tracks increased 12% from March.

Among the notable outperformers in April was Greenidge (NYSE:GREE), which saw its shares soar 46%.

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