Bitcoin Network’s Hashrate Growth Showed Limited Progress in January, JPMorgan Reveals.

In a report released Monday, JPMorgan (JPM) revealed that the Bitcoin network saw a small increase in hashrate for January, while mining difficulty experienced a rare dip.

The average monthly hashrate rose by 1%, reaching 785 exahashes per second (EH/s), while the mining difficulty decreased by 2%, which is unusual, according to the report. By the end of January, the 7-day moving average for the hashrate was 781 EH/s, representing a 2% drop from December. JPMorgan analysts pointed out that this reduction in difficulty is a somewhat uncommon occurrence, offering a mild advantage to Bitcoin mining economics.

Despite the drop in difficulty, Bitcoin’s network difficulty remains 25% higher than it was before the halving event in April 2024. In a separate report from CoinDesk, Bitcoin’s 7-day moving average hashrate recently reached a new all-time high of 833 EH/s.

Mining profitability saw a slight improvement in January, with JPMorgan estimating that miners earned an average of $57,200 per EH/s in daily block rewards, a modest gain of less than 1% from the previous month.

The overall market cap of the Bitcoin miners tracked by JPMorgan grew by 5% month-over-month. Among the outperformers were Cipher Mining (CIFR), which saw a 23% gain, and Riot Platforms (RIOT), up 16%, thanks to announcements tied to high-performance computing (HPC). TeraWulf (WULF) saw the opposite trend, with its shares dropping 16% during the month.