Last Updated on March 21, 2023 by Bitfinsider

The rise in cryptocurrencies this year has given bitcoin producers some welcome news.

In an analyst note published on Monday, the investment firm Stifel stated that the first three months of this year are “shaping up to be a better quarter” than the previous one.

At $0.08 per terahash hashprice, which gauges the earnings of miners based on a number of variables, has increased 36% since March 12.

According to CleanSpark Executive Chairman Matthew Schultz, “this is pure gravy” for the company. He added: “When you look at the price appreciation in bitcoin, it’s essentially another $200,000 a day in free cash flow if you’re mining 20 bitcoin a day, which is about where we are.”

The rise in the price of bitcoin coincides with miners eventually experiencing a drop in power costs, effectively reversing trends that reduced their profit margins and even drove some into bankruptcy last year. Even the most severely impacted businesses may have an opportunity for a turnaround.

The market has greatly aided us, according to a Core Scientific spokesperson who made the statement last week. Core Scientific declared for bankruptcy in December. “Power costs have dropped significantly. And if you’re a bitcoin miner, your main cost input is electricity pricing… Although we are spending a lot of money on professional expenses, everything is running smoothly otherwise.”

Mining involves striking a balance between a variety of variables, and analysts have warned that as the economy as a whole improves, the better environment may be partially offset by a rise in mining difficulty as the competition heats up.

The influx of machines going online, according to CleanSpark’s Schultz, is noticeable, but nothing compares to what miners had previously planned and announced.

So far, there hasn’t been a direct effect, but Schultz explained that there may be one in the future. “It’s likely to have an impact on the price of mining equipment going forward,” he added.

Various forecasts predict that this week’s difficulty will increase by 5% to 6%. It will follow increases of 9.95% and 1.16% to mark the third rise in a succession.

The note from Stifel stated, “We anticipate ongoing growth to the overall network hash rate in the near term as newer generation machine deliveries are installed and brought online.”

Because there is currently a shortage of machine rackspace, there will be a delay before the challenge increases significantly if the price of bitcoin significantly in 2023, according to a Core Scientific spokesperson.

For the first time since December 2021, the ASIC machine market began to move upward in late January. According to statistics from Luxor, which operates an ASIC trading desk, prices for those in the highest efficiency tier have increased 9% over the past two months.

According to Luxor COO Ethan Vera, mid-generation machines are usually more susceptible to shifts in mining economics than the utmost recent generation models.

“With Bitcoin heading towards $30k it’s becoming easier for companies to raise equity capital, allowing them to deleverage their balance sheet. This deleveraging is resulting in less distressed assets coming to market and a reduction of ASIC supply,” according to Vera. “Miners will seek to hedge costs and income and use less leverage than in the past. The price of bitcoin will, however, increase ASIC marketplaces,” he added.

Unless machine supply in the markets stays “too high,” prices could change “pretty quickly,” Vera said. For the past few months, miners have been in survival mode, working to reduce their debt and straighten out their balance accounts. In the rush to deploy quickly after the final bull market in 2021, some people took on significant debt to purchase a large number of machines at comparatively high rates.