Despite the decline in mining machine profits, GMO has mined 960 BTC in a single month

According to financemagnates on January 8, Japanese IT giant GMO Internet released its latest monthly report on cryptocurrency mining yesterday. Although revenue has dropped significantly, the number of mined bitcoins has increased significantly in the past few months, from 21 bitcoins in December 2017 to 528 bitcoins in June 2018, and then to 960 bitcoins in December. The report wrote:

“The total hashrate of the market is down, our mining share is up, and therefore the number of mining rewards is also up.”

The total hashrate represents the combined computing power of each miner on the network. This number is slowly decreasing as some miners and mining farms withdraw. GMO's report also disclosed the company's hashrate changes, from 22PH/s in December 2017 to 384 PH/s in June 2018, and then rose to 670 PH/s in December 2018.

This growth disappeared in the final months of last year, with the company’s hashrate remaining between 668 PH/s and 674 PH/s at the end of 2018. However, rewards do not necessarily increase with an increase in hashrate. GMO explained that “for each cryptocurrency, profitability fluctuates and the distribution of hashrate is based on an algorithm.”

In addition to information about Bitcoin, the company also publishes mining rewards and hashrates for other cryptocurrencies. For example, in December 2018 they did not mine Bitcoin Cash.

However, the company’s mining revenue has taken a huge hit due to the drop in Bitcoin prices.

At the end of last year, Japanese Internet giant GMO announced a huge loss of 24 billion yen (about 218 million U.S. dollars) and decided to stop all mining machine research and development, manufacturing and sales activities, but will continue mining within the company. It also stated that it will re-select the location of the mining center to seek a lower electricity cost and cleaner energy supply.

The company also stated:

“Starting this year, we will no longer publish monthly reports on our cryptocurrency mining business. We will disclose the relevant performance of our cryptocurrency mining business when we publish our quarterly earnings reports to help our stakeholders understand the relevant situation.”

Driven by the rise in Bitcoin prices, GMO first entered the cryptocurrency mining business in late 2017. It was a good business decision for the company, as Bitcoin prices soared to around $20,000 at the time. According to GMO's previous monthly reports, the company hoarded a large amount of funds, and its huge mining infrastructure even brought competitive pressure to established mining companies such as BitFury.