Wall Street bank JPMorgan (JPM) said the second quarter and summer of 2025 were transformative for bitcoin (BTC) miners, marked by record cash operating profits and a pivot toward high-performance computing (HPC).
Cipher Mining’s (CIFR) 244 megawatt (MW) colocation deal with Fluidstack and IREN’s (IREN) expansion to more than 23,000 GPUs underscored that shift, the bank said in the Tuesday report.
Despite surging hashrates, the bank’s analysts noted that miners’ gross profits rose quarter-over-quarter, buoyed by higher bitcoin prices and more efficient fleets.
Production costs rose modestly as competition intensified and high-performance computing (HPC) investments expanded, the analysts said. IREN and Cipher had the lowest power costs per bitcoin mined at roughly $29,000 and $31,200, while MARA’s (MARA) were the highest at about $56,200. On a fully loaded basis (power plus cash SG&A), IREN and CleanSpark (CLSK) led with costs near $54,000 and $60,000 per coin, compared with Riot’s (RIOT) $81,000. Bitcoin averaged around $98,500 in the quarter, leaving most operators profitable.
JPMorgan said miners also accelerated fundraising, issuing about $590 million in new equity, up sharply from the first quarter, with much of it flowing to HPC projects. IREN raised $263 million to complete its 50-exahash expansion and begin building a 75MW liquid-cooled data center called Horizon 1. Total capex across the group reached about $900 million, below late-2024 peaks but rising sequentially.
Miners collectively spent a record $2.1 billion on energy, the analysts estimated, while gross profits held steady at roughly $2.1 billion, with margins near 53%.
The bank said bitcoin’s strength and improving efficiency continued to offset network growth, sustaining profitability even amid escalating competition.
Read more: Bitcoin Miners’ Market Cap Hit a Record in September: JPMorgan
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