Has U.S. hashrate peaked?

Plus, the Israel-Iran conflict goes cyber, Trump's BTC ETF, and more!

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For today’s ICYMI, a note on JPMorgan’s latest report on the relative hashrate dominance of U.S.-listed public miners — and why their hashrate share has probably peaked.

And in other news, Trump Media files for another crypto ETF, an Iranian crypto exchange gets caught in the crossfire, and a quantum resistance startup emerges from stealth.

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Publicly traded bitcoin miners hit record share of Bitcoin hashrate in June

Per research from JPMorgan, the share of Bitcoin’s hashrate produced by the top 13 U.S.-listed public miners has never been higher. This cohort’s share of Bitcoin’s hashrate has hit 31.6% this June, up from ~23% this time last year and 14.8% in January 2022. – link

OUR TAKE: Alright, we’re calling it: this is the top (or at least close to it).

We’re not exactly shocked to see this number going up (all those S21 orders are really starting to show).

But it’s happening at a time when bitcoin miners are increasingly shifting to HPC business lines. Consider some of the following news items from the past year:

  • IREN plans to pause hashrate expansion after hitting 52 EH/s to focus on AI/HPC

  • Riot suspends phase two of Corsicana while it evaluates the site for AI/HPC load, revises downward its hashrate target for 2025

  • Bitfarms halts bitcoin mining expansion to lean into AI/HPC in Pennsylvania

  • Cipher receives $50 million infection from SoftBank as it gears up for AI/HPC operations at Barber Lake (and potentially Black Pearl)

  • Terawulf signs deal with Core42 to deliver 70 MW of critical IT load

  • Galaxy Digital inks multi-billion dollar HPC deal with CoreWeave

I could go one with some of the more minor ones, but you get the gist. Some of the largest public miners in the U.S. are turning their attention almost exclusively to AI/HPC, at least for the time being. And we’re still in the early stages; most of the miners have been adding hashrate this year to meet prior targets, but they are starting to slow down. And soon, they will stop adding hashrate entirely as they hunker down with their AI/HPC rollouts. 

Once that happens, we should see their share of Bitcoin’s hashrate start to dwindle. Some pureplay miners of course will continue to carry the torch, but it should be harder for U.S. miners to secure power allotments as they have to jockey with hyperscalers and traditional data center companies. The U.S.’s electricity production capacity has basically flatlined since the 2000s, so there’s not enough power to go around for two electron-hungry industries. 

So looking beyond the public miner landscape, it’s entirely probable that we’ve seen the peak of U.S. hashrate dominance – but time will tell.

-CMH

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Senate passes GENIUS bill

The United States Senate passed the GENIUS Act in a 68-30 vote this week. The watershed legislation would create regulations for stablecoins, including a formal process for private companies to issue the digital dollar equivalents with the government’s approval. The bill is now headed to the House for consideration. — link

Trump Media files for BTC and ETH ETF

Trump Media, President Trump’s publicly traded media firm which operates the Truth Social platform, has filed for an ETF that would include both bitcoin and ether. The filing follows closely on the heels of Trump Media’s filing for a bitcoin ETF earlier in June. - link

Hackers with Israeli ties hack $90 million from Iran crypto exchange 

As Israel and Iran trade fusillade blows, the hostilities have bled into cyberspace. The hacker group Predatory Sparrow drained $90 million from the Iranian exchange Nobitex. While taking credit for the attack on X, the group claimed that the Iranian regime uses the exchange to circumvent international sanctions. The group reportedly burned the stolen cryptocurrency by sending it to wallets that are inaccessible. - link

Project 11 closes raise, aims to bring quantum resistance to Bitcoin

Project 11 has raised $6 million. Its pitch? Make Bitcoin immune to quantum computing. A functioning quantum computer would compromise current encryption methods, which secures data for Bitcoin, bank accounts, web traffic, messaging, and everything in between. "A cryptographically relevant quantum computer will break the foundational security assumptions of Bitcoin and nearly every digital asset. With rapid progress from companies like IBM and Google, that future is no longer hypothetical. It’s coming fast and there isn’t long to prepare,” the company said. - link

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-CMH