Investors responded favorably to news of Core Scientific’s AI partnership with CoreWeave, and mining stocks outperformed Bitcoin in the first half of the month.
The Wall Street Bank claimed in a research paper on Monday that the combined market capitalization of the 14 U.S.-listed bitcoin (BTC) miners, which includes JPMorgan, reached a new high of $22.8 billion on June 15.
In the first two weeks of June, the bank observed that nearly every company outperformed bitcoin, with Core Scientific (CORZ) increasing 117% and Argo Blockchain (ARBK) declining 7%. During that time, the most prominent cryptocurrency in the world saw a 3% decline.
According to the research, investors responded favorably to news of Core Scientific’s acquisition of artificial intelligence startup CoreWeave, which led to a boost in bitcoin mining stocks in the first half of the month.
The decline in mining difficulty since the reward reduction in April has continued.
According to experts Reginald Smith and Charles Pearce, “the network hash rate, a proxy for industry competition and mining difficulty, has declined ~7 EH/s (1%) since May.”
The 14 companies collectively “account for 23.8% of the global network hash rate,” an increase of about 1% from the previous month due to the U.S.-listed miners’ increasing hash rate.
According to the bank, this was the second month that US miners had seen increases in network hash rates, which was a positive indication that “inefficient private operators scaled back operations post-halving.”