Bitcoin mining stocks slide as BTC production costs climb

The Bitcoin mining stocks market has slipped slightly by 1.8% compared to last week. The majority of the stocks were in the red as the trading volume dipped by 25.66%.

At the start of the week, BTC mining stocks had a trading volume of $413.5k, and by Friday, this number dropped to $307.35k. The market cap was standing at $69.12 billion on November 28th, but it dropped to $67.89 billion on December 5.

Bitcoin mining stocks record 25 losers

There are 34 BTC mining stocks listed on trading markets. Out of those, six stocks closed the week in the green while the remaining 25 mining stocks were in the red.

The top 10 Bitcoin mining stocks were among the losers, except for Applied Digital Corporation (ticker: APLD) and Core Scientific, Inc. (ticker: CORZ). APLD finished the week with 15.20% gains, while CORZ saw a positive 1.30% during the same timeline.

On December 2, Applied Digital invested $25 million in a funding round for Corintis, a Swiss company that develops advanced chip-cooling solutions. Corintis aims to improve efficiency and power density in data centers running AI workloads. Applied Digital wants to expand its footprint in designing, building, and operating high-performance data centers through investments and partnerships.

VR Advisory Services, an asset manager, scooped up over 1.2 million CORZ stocks. The acquisition happened in the third quarter and was disclosed in an SEC filing dated November 14. CORZ closed the week at $17.11 while APLD was standing at $31.22.

Among other winners for the last week include SATO Technologies Corp., SOS Limited, Cathedra Bitcoin, Inc., and Ebang International Holdings, Inc.

The biggest loser for the week was American Bitcoin Corp. (ticker: ABTC) with a 47.40% price drop in five days. The company that was co-founded by Eric Trump saw a tough week. ABTC started the week trading at $5.75 and dropped to $2.23 by Friday.

The heavy selling of ABTC happened at a time when Bitcoin climbed above $91k. Crypto-linked stocks followed suit and climbed higher. But ABTC tanked after a share unlock allowed early private investors to cash out for the first time.

Eric Trump said on X, “Today our pre-merger private placement shares unlocked — these early investors are freely available to cash in on their profits for the first time, which is why we will see volatility.”

American Bitcoin went public in September through a reverse merger with Gryphon Digital. Such a structure makes ABTC naturally volatile and attracts speculative traders.

Bitcoin production costs surge

Based on data from CryptoRank, the average cash cost to mine one BTC among public miners climbed to $74,600. But the all-in cost including depreciation and SBC (stock-based compensation) jumped to $137,800.

Mining profitability has tanked, especially after the hashrate shot past the symbolic 1 zettahashes per second (ZH/s) point. The competition among public BTC miners is intense.

That’s why Bitcoin mining companies are moving to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads to compensate for mining losses and diversify revenue streams. AI data centers have healthy profit margins compared to BTC mining.

Bitcoin is currently trading at around $91k. CoinGecko data shows that BTC increased by 2.2% in the past 24 hours but the fear and greed index is pointing to extreme fear.

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