Bitcoin (BTC-USD) miners earned $574.9M in July, down around 14% from June, as rising electricity costs and heightened competition hinder the industry's profitability, The Block reported Monday, citing data from Coin Metrics. That's down from a peak of $1.72B in October 2021, just a month prior to the heights of major cryptocurrencies like bitcoin (BTC-USD) and ethereum (ETH-USD). As a reminder, bitcoin (BTC-USD) miners generate earnings by verifying a new block of BTC transactions. Moreover, the miners receive rewards in BTC after producing those blocks in which they solve a complex math problem. The slump in earnings comes as energy costs soar globally amid Russia's war in Ukraine as well as a lack of U.S. infrastructure to support oil production. Keep in mind that BTC mining profitability is impacted greatly by the costs of electricity and equipment. Some miners are also selling their bitcoin (BTC-USD) holdings and rigs in a bid to better manage costs amid a broad market downturn. The two most widely used rigs among miners are graphics processing units ("GPU") and application-specific integrated circuits ("ASIC"). "The glut of idle ASICs can’t be overlooked as a cause for higher hosting rates," Compass Mining Multimedia Director William Foxley wrote in a release dated July 30. "Many publicly listed miners have thousands of machines offline."While miners kept losing money in July, bitcoin (BTC-USD) HODLers enjoyed the past m...
