CleanSpark to end monthly bitcoin reports as output falls 11%

CleanSpark mined 529 bitcoin in September, down about 11 percent from August, and said it will stop publishing monthly mining updates. The largest US-listed bitcoin miner is switching to quarterly reporting as it builds data centers for artificial intelligence.

Those figures come from the company's September operational update, released October 9. CleanSpark did not include an August comparison in that release. The drop is measured against the 593 bitcoin it reported a month earlier, a figure The Block confirmed on October 15 while tracking output across three listed miners.

A softer month and the end of monthly updates

CleanSpark's average operating hashrate slipped to 36.0 exahashes per second, down from 38.3 in August. Daily output averaged 17.64 bitcoin. The company held 13,530 bitcoin on September 30, down from 13,703 a month earlier. It sold 2 bitcoin on the spot market and parted with another 700 through call option exercises, at an average price of $72,928 each. About 3,475 of its coins are tied up as collateral for derivatives.

The bigger news sat lower in the release. CleanSpark said it will discontinue monthly operational updates and move to standard quarterly reporting, which it called consistent with peers in the energy and data center sectors. Matt Schultz, CEO and chairman, kept his comment on power, not coins. "The demand for power and land, with the certainty to build, remains relentless," he said.

That shift tracks a wider change in what these companies want to be. CleanSpark closed $2.276 billion of senior secured notes due 2031 to fund a data center campus in Sandersville, Georgia. It now reports 1.8 gigawatts of power under contract and 808 megawatts in use. Anyone who wants to follow the mining side month by month loses that view. The numbers will still appear in quarterly filings. Just less often.

BitFuFu and Canaan tell the same story

BitFuFu produced 167 bitcoin in September, down 4 percent from 174 in August. The mix underneath moved in two directions. Self-mining rose more than 11 percent to 98 bitcoin. Cloud mining, where customers rent hashrate instead of running their own rigs, fell nearly 20 percent to 69 bitcoin. It is the same kind of product Binance is closing in November. The firm held 1,388 bitcoin at month-end, up slightly from 1,373.

A planned expansion in Ethiopia is the other worry at BitFuFu. The operator of an 80 megawatt site there is in dispute with local power suppliers, which puts the deal at risk. BitFuFu has already paid $4.1 million and installed about 13,700 Antminer S19 rigs. It said it is weighing its options, including cancelling the purchase to recover part of that money.

Canaan held flat. The hardware maker produced 44 bitcoin in September, the same as August, which ended three straight monthly declines. It held 1,875 bitcoin at the end of the month. Canaan has leaned into a second use for mining heat. Its 8 megawatt project in the Nordic region now warms about 2,800 homes, and a similar one is going up in Canada. The firm also spent $5.4 million buying back 13.6 million of its American depositary shares in late August.

The output dip matters less than the pivot

Monthly swings in bitcoin output come mostly from weather, maintenance and network difficulty. A soft September across three miners is not, by itself, a red flag. The plain mechanics of how long it takes to mine one bitcoin explain why monthly totals move around. The share prices are the louder signal. On October 15, CleanSpark traded at $8.76, down more than 24 percent this year, according to The Block. BitFuFu sat at $1.27, down more than 54 percent. Canaan traded at $0.25, down more than 68 percent.

What links the three companies is a pull away from pure mining. CleanSpark is spending billions on AI capacity. Canaan sells heat. BitFuFu is deciding whether a foreign bet is worth keeping. None has said mining will stop. The reporting change at CleanSpark is a small marker of where attention is going. Fewer listed miners want to be judged only by how much bitcoin they produce each month.

What to watch

CleanSpark's next detailed read now arrives with quarterly results rather than a monthly note, so the flow of mining data from the biggest US miner thins out from here. Whether rivals copy the move is worth watching. At BitFuFu, the Ethiopia decision is the near-term question, and the company has not said when it will make the call. For Canaan, the test is whether flat output turns into growth or slides again. A weaker bitcoin price would squeeze margins across the group and make the move toward power and data centers look smarter still.