These Top 3 Crypto Mining Firms Lost $1 Billion In Q2

Three of the biggest publicly traded crypto mining firms have reported a loss of $1 billion in the second quarter following a bearish market and impairment losses due to declining prices of cryptocurrencies.

In the quarter ending June 30, mining firms Core Scientific, Marathon Digital Holdings and Riot Blockchain reported losses of $862 million, $192 million and $366 million respectively, reported Bloomberg.

In the same period, the price of Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency, declined by almost 30%, according to the data from CoinMarketCap.

Bitfarms and Greenidge Generation Holdings were also affected by the crypto market downturn this quarter. The former suffered losses worth $142 million, while the latter confirmed a GAAP net loss of $107.9 million for the quarter.

"We have chosen to pause our plans to develop certain additional sites in our pipeline in the ERCOT market and, instead, intend to concentrate our operations at our two existing sites in South Carolina and New York for the time being," said Jeff Kirt, chief executive officer of Greenidge in a statement.

Although the crypto market has been green in the past two weeks, the firms are still in loss. In order to compensate for the drop in Bitcoin price and mining losses, the firms had to sell their mined cryptocurrencies to make up for the operational costs.

Quebec-based Bitfarms sold 3,357 Bitcoin for $69.3 million this quarter. About the sell-offs, a CNBC report from July confirmed that 14,000 Bitcoin, worth more than $300 million at that time, were transferred out of wallets belonging to miners in a single day last week.

"Public miners are still dumping their Bitcoin holdings at a higher rate than their production rate," Jarand Mellerud, an analyst at Arcane Crypto, wrote in a research note. "Public miners sold 6,200 coins in July, making July the second highest BTC selling month in 2022."

Additionally, Coinbase, a major crypto exchange, also reported a loss of $1 billion in Q2.