Prices are down 30% since Jan. 1, but that’s not stopping Ethereum miners from raking in the money.
- Ethereum miners outpaced Bitcoin miners in total revenue for a tenth consecutive month, at $1.2 billion and $1 billion, respectively.
- Ethereum miners have earned over $1 billion in monthly revenue for 12 months straight.
Mining difficulty continues to eat away at profits, however. The network’s hashrate stands to break past 1,000 TH/s in the near future for the first time, according to Coin Metrics.
- Hashrate is up only 7% year-to-date, but 135% year-over-year.
- Revenue per hash in dollar terms is down some 46% in three months.
Indeed, unless price recovers above $4,000, it is likely Ethereum mining will slip under $1 billion in monthly revenue in the near term.
Graphic card stocks
Graphic card manufacturers AMD, Nvidia and Intel have also suffered in the new year, down 14%, 17% and 7%, respectively. AMD and Nvidia manufacture the GPUs used in ether mining, such as Nvidia's Cryptocurrency Mining Processor (CMP). Nvidia's CMP sales fell 77% last quarter from $105 million to $24 million.
A drop in stock prices for GPU manufacturers follows a wider pattern among tech stocks, as depicted by the Ark Innovation ETF. The ETF tracks a basket of tech firms such as Tesla and Zoom and is often used as a benchmark for the technology sector. The fund is down 25% year-to-date.
