JPMorgan strategists may have just called Bitcoin’s bottom price. Others suggest there’s still more pain ahead.
In a recent report by Decrypt, investment bank JPMorgan estimates that the production cost to mine one Bitcoin has dropped from $24,000 at the start of June to just $13,000.
Bitcoin’s production cost estimates the average cost for mining one Bitcoin daily. This cost depends primarily on the electricity costs incurred by miners for running their machines, but there are other variables.
So long as the price of Bitcoin holds above this cost, a mining operation remains profitable. Many market observers suggest that production costs also can serve “as the lower bound of Bitcoin’s price range in a bear market.”
According to the New York-based bank, Bitcoin’s bottom could be a lowly $13,000, marking a 45% drop from today’s prices.
“While clearly helping miners’ profitability and potentially reducing pressures on miners to sell Bitcoin holdings to raise liquidity or for deleveraging, the decline in the production cost might be perceived as negative for the Bitcoin price outlook going forward,” JPMorgan strategists, led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, wrote.
Still, other metrics paint a slightly different picture for the leading cryptocurrency.
According to data pulled from MacroMicro, the production cost still hovers at a little over $17,700. “When mining costs are lower than Bitcoin’s market value, more miners will join. When mining costs are higher than the miner’s revenue, the number of miners will decrease,” the data provider’s site explains.
Both entities calculate Bitcoin’s production cost using Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI) data. However, the data provided by CBECI depends on the average electricity costs of the miner, which can deviate widely and affect calculations.
Other costs can also vary, including infrastructure, hardware, and hiring employees to maintain mining farms.
“The cost of production varies greatly based on the kind of rigs, and the cost of power, but also labor costs and facility maintenance,” Zach Bradford, CEO of Bitcoin mining firm CleanSpark, confirmed with Decrypt.
Bradford added that his team’s analysis puts the production cost even lower than JPMorgan’s.
“With the majority of public miners running latest [generation] rigs, and with strategic power management contracts in place, our internal research puts the number closer to $12,000 for public miners,” he said. “But even within a company, it will vary by facility. CleanSpark, for example, has facilities that are lower than that.”
That means that as long as Bitcoin stays above $12,000, public miners would still turn a profit.
Bitcoin miners capitulate
Regardless of the differences in production costs, almost all miners have come under pressure following Bitcoin’s catastrophic plunge in November.
Glassnode has outlined this stress using something called the Puell Multiple.
This mathematical model measures the overall income for Bitcoin miners; when the metric is especially low, miners earn less on average and are more likely to sell Bitcoin holdings or shutter some machines.
These days, they earn a lot less than in the past.
“Bitcoin miners earn just 49% as much as the 12-month average. This implies miner income stress is a likely factor,” Glassnode wrote in a recent report.
Events like the COVID crash, China’s crypto ban, and recent price action correlate with a low Puell Multiple and broader miner capitulation.
Recent headlines also confirm as much.
Last month, publicly traded Bitcoin miner Core Scientific Inc. sold nearly 7,000 Bitcoin at an average price of $23,000. Similarly, Algo Blockchain sold roughly $15.6 million in the leading cryptocurrency to cover costs.
From a glance at their stock prices, public mining companies have also been hugely affected by the brutal cryptocurrency bear market.
Marathon Digital Holdings is down 73% year-to-date, Riot Blockchain Inc. is down 73% year-to-date, and Core Scientific Inc. shed 81% year to date. And if Bitcoin continues to tumble, so too could these figures.