April was an interesting month for both the stock market and Bitcoin. While Bitcoin mining stocks and broader tech stocks like Netflix fell some 50%, Bitcoin slid a mere 15%. Hashrate continued to climb, even though a few small negative difficulty adjustments occurred.
Difficulty
Bitcoin has seen a continued growth in hashrate and difficulty since July 2021. April 2021 was no different, with a small negative difficulty adjustment of around -1% and a positive adjustment of some 6%. Nearly one year since China’s Bitcoin mining ban, Bitcoin’s network hashrate growth has slowed. Difficulty has followed suit, with a max difficulty adjustment of 13% to smaller or even negative adjustments we’ve seen this spring.
Miner Revenue
Miner revenue fell slightly month-over-month, down 4.5% from $1.21 billion to $1.16 billion. Miner revenue includes the block reward and transaction fees and is therefore closely tied to Bitcoin’s price. Fees made up around 1% of miner rewards.
Hashprice
Hashprice is the amount of revenue a miner makes per terrahash per day. Currently, hashprice is going sideways with a previously more aggressive drop in late 2021. The last few months gave miners a breather as hashprice saw a slower drop compared to previous months. The period-over-period slowdown in difficulty is one part of the equation to why miners are staying flat on hashprice.
Mining Stocks
This month the stock market took a major hit. Almost everything is in the red, and year-to-date mining stocks are wildly underperforming Bitcoin. For perspective, the S&P 500 has performed the best. Bitcoin is showing itself to be closely tied with the equity markets.
In April alone, larger Bitcoin mining stocks fell from between 20% to almost 50%, while the S&P and Bitcoin are down 8.5% and 15% respectively. For the amount that the larger mining stock market was in red, Bitcoin fared pretty well.
