The total market cap of the mining stocks tracked by the bank grew 33%, the report said.

Bitcoin (BTC) mining economics improved in the first half of November as the hashprice rose, JPMorgan (JPM) said in a research report on Monday.

The hashprice, a measure of mining profitability, “increased 29% since the end of October as the BTC rally outpaced network hashrate growth and transaction fees increased as a percentage of the block reward,” analysts Reginald Smith and Charles Pearce wrote.

The total market cap of the mining stocks the bank tracks surged 33%, or around $8 billion, from Oct. 31 to Nov. 15 owing to “BTC gains and broader crypto optimism post election,” the authors wrote.

Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, surged as much as 30% to all-time highs following Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election earlier this month.

The network hashrate has risen 2% month-to-date to an average of 718 exahashes per second (EH/s), the report said. 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 14 U.S.-listed miners in the bank’s coverage now account for about 28% of the global network, and their share of the network hashrate remains at record highs.

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U.S.-listed mining companies produced a larger share of bitcoin in July than the previous month as they brought on new capacity faster than the network hashrate rose, the report said.

Bitcoin (BTC) mining was slightly less profitable in June than the month previous, as the price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency fell over 6% while the network hashrate remained stable, investment bank Jefferies said in a research report on Thursday.

Hashrate is a proxy for competition in the industry and mining difficulty.

The bank cut its Marathon Digital (MARA) price target to $17 from $22 while maintaining a hold rating on the shares. The stock fell 0.7% to around $15 in pre-market trading.

U.S.-listed mining companies produced a larger share of bitcoin in July than June, accounting for 21.1% of the total network versus 20.7% in May, the report said. August will be a more difficult month for the miners as the price of bitcoin has dropped about 5% while the network hashrate has started to grow again, the report added.

Their market share rose as “public players brought on new capacity faster than the network hashrate increased,” analysts Jonathan Petersen and Joe Dickstein wrote.

Marathon Digital produced the most bitcoin in July, a total of 692 coins or 17% more than the month before, the report noted. The miner’s installed hashrate also remains the largest in the sector.

Wall Street giant JPMorgan (JPM) noted that U.S.-listed miners’ share of the global hashrate reached a record in July, the bank said in a report last month.

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The bump in mining difficulty comes as hashrate remains strong, despite bitcoin’s price edging downward.

On-chain data shows that bitcoin’s mining difficulty has crossed an all-time high with its latest jump, the second in two weeks.

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty increased by 3.45% at block height 753,984 to 32.05 trillion hashes.

This is the second significant recent increase. On Aug. 31, the difficulty jumped by 9.26%.

Given bitcoin’s compressed value, with recent declines on high CPI numbers, and a possible bottoming out as low as $10,000, profitability is narrowing for miners.

Despite concerns about profitability, the average hash rate remains above 200 exahash per second at 229.39 EH/s, close to the all-time high of 231 EH/s.

On-chain data shows that DCG-owned Foundry USA is currently contributing 28% of the total global hash rate followed by AntPool at 16.15%.

CoinDesk is an independent subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, the crypto-focused conglomerate that also owns Grayscale and TradeBlock.

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From September 2021 to January this year, China’s contribution to the bitcoin mining network was second only to that of the U.S.

China is once again contributing a significant chunk of the world’s bitcoin mining operations despite the ban last year, according to the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF).

From September 2021 to January this year, China’s contribution to the bitcoin mining network was second only to that of the U.S., according to the CCAF’s Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI), which maps the mining activity around the world based on the geolocational data reported by partnering pools.

Following the crackdown on bitcoin mining in the country last year, China’s share was reduced to 0% in July and August. However, the CCAF’s latest data show that the figure was up to 22.29% in September and fluctuated around 20% in October-January.

This suggests that underground mining activity has been underway in China. “Access to off-grid electricity and geographically scattered small-scale operations are among the major means used by underground miners to hide their operations from authorities and circumvent the ban,” the CCAF said in a statement, according to a report by the South China Morning Post.

The sudden drop to 0% in July and August followed by a swift increase in the subsequent months suggests mining firms may have been operating covertly and concealing their locations while using foreign proxy services to fend off attention and scrutiny.

Kazakhstan, for example, appeared to be one of the preferred destinations for miners. The Central Asian country’s share of the network climbed above 18% in August last year, according to the CBECI.

By September, miners may have become assured that foreign proxy services were having their desired effect and they need not go to such lengths to conceal their operations in China.

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The decrease is likely a result of miners unplugging their machines due to high energy costs, said Compass Mining CEO Whitt Gibbs.

The difficulty of mining a bitcoin block dropped 0.35% on Thursday, the second time this month, after a consistent climb since November.

On March 3, mining difficulty dropped 1.5%, data from information platform Glassnode shows.

The difficulty adjusts automatically relative to the computing power on the network, also known as the hashrate, to keep the time between each mined block relatively stable at 10 minutes.

The bitcoin mining hashrate has dropped from an all-time high in February of 248 exahash/second (EH/s) to 216 EH/s on March 17, according to data from Glassnode.

“This slight drop is likely due to unprofitable miners unplugging ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits). As energy prices increase globally, we will likely see more ASICs fall off the network,” Compass Mining founder and CEO Whitt Gibbs told CoinDesk in a Telegram message on Friday.

Electricity prices are soaring across the world as one of the world’s largest exporters of fossil fuels, Russia, is enthralled in a war with Ukraine, and global energy supply chains are being severed by sanctions.

“My bet is that Kazakh miners going offline due to electricity shortages and a government crackdown on illegal mining caused the drop,” Jaran Mellerud, researcher at Oslo-based Arcane Research, told CoinDesk.

On March 15, Kazakh authorities said they seized almost $200 million of equipment from crypto mining operations as they crack down on illicit mines. Legally operating miners in Kazakhstan had their power cut off at the end of January, as the government struggled with energy shortages.

“Using HashrateIndex’s prices per TH (terahash, a measurement of the hashrate, the computing power on the bitcoin mining network) for rigs with medium efficiency, the Kazakh government should have seized around 3 TH/s worth of mining rigs, equivalent to 1.5% of Bitcoin’s hashrate,” Mellerud said.

Despite the fact that North American miners continue to plug in new machines, “the withdrawal of capacity from Kazakhstan is currently limiting bitcoin’s hashrate growth,” he said.

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