Shares of IREN Ltd, specialized in Bitcoin mining, recorded a strong jump of 11.4% on Wednesday, after announcing July results that showed it outperformed its competitor MARA Holdings in terms of the amount of Bitcoin mined, despite having lower mining capacity.
IREN revealed that it successfully mined 728 Bitcoin during July, compared to only 703 Bitcoin for MARA. This achievement comes at a time when IREN has a deployed mining capacity of 50 exahashes per second (EH/s), compared to 58.9 EH/s for MARA.
The company mentioned that the average actual hash rate during the month was 45.4 EH/s, indicating high efficiency in its equipment. These results gain more significance in light of the recent noticeable increase in mining difficulty, which pressures profit margins due to rising energy consumption.
MARA maintains its reserve superiority despite the decline
Despite a decline in its monthly production, MARA Holdings recorded strong financial performance in the second quarter of the year, with revenues rising 64% year-on-year to $238 million. MARA also holds the second-largest Bitcoin reserve among public companies, after MicroStrategy, with a total of 50,000 Bitcoin.
IREN shares soar, and market value exceeds $4 billion
IREN shares (ticker symbol: IREN) closed trading on Wednesday at $18.32, up 11.4%, while the gains of other public mining companies ranged between 1% and 5% only. With this jump, the company's market value rose to $4.11 billion, making it the second-largest publicly traded Bitcoin mining company, after Core Scientific and ahead of Riot Platforms.
Expansion in artificial intelligence and cloud computing
As part of its diversification strategy, IREN announced that $2.3 million of its monthly revenue came from the cloud computing sector linked to artificial intelligence. Daniel Roberts, co-founder and CEO, confirmed that there is increasing interest in Nvidia Blackwell processors for running AI applications.
The company purchased 2,400 units of these processors during July, receiving 256 units as an initial batch, indicating that the combination of mining and artificial intelligence technologies reflects the resilience of its infrastructure and its ability to keep pace with market changes.
From exaggerated accusations to a sharp rise in stocks
The positive results for July represent a significant turnaround in IREN's performance, especially after a negative report issued by the short-selling firm Culper Research last year, which claimed that the company was overvalued and lacked sufficient investments in artificial intelligence, describing its attempts as 'like participating in the Monaco Grand Prix in a Toyota Prius.'
Since then, IREN's stock has fallen from $12.31 to $5.59 last April, but it has rebounded strongly by 227% over the past four months, closing at $18.32.
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