Bitcoin mining profitability dropped in September, the bank said.
Jefferies said October could be a harder month for the sector as the hashrate has risen 11%, more than offsetting the 5% increase in the bitcoin price.
North American listed mining companies mined a larger share of the network in September than August, the report said.
Bitcoin (BTC) mining profitability fell in September from the month before, as the average price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency was broadly unchanged while the network hashrate rose about 1.7%, Jefferies said in a research report Sunday.
The investment bank noted that average daily revenue per exahash fell by 2.6% from the month previous.
“October is currently poised to be a harder month with BTC prices only up around 5%, while the network hashrate up +11% more than offsets that growth,” analysts Jonathan Petersen and Joe Dickstein wrote.
North American listed mining companies mined a larger share of bitcoin in September than August, and comprised 22.2% of the total network, up from 19.9% in August, the report said. This was driven in part by better uptime for these firms who benefitted from lower temperatures.
Marathon Digital (MARA) mined the largest number of bitcoin, at 705 tokens, followed by CleanSpark (CLSK), which mined 493, the bank said.
Marathon’s installed hashrate remained the largest in the sector, and was 36.9 exahashes per second (EH/s) at the end of September, the report noted. Riot Platforms (RIOT) was second with 28.2 (EH/s).
Jefferies noted that the “bitcoin election” is coming to its conclusion, and said that irrespective of who wins “we could see incrementally favorable policies toward the industry.”