IREN Limited has emerged as a top performer in the Bitcoin mining sector, outperforming rival MARA Holdings in both production and operational efficiency. In a recent announcement, IREN reported mining 728 BTC in July, surpassing MARA's 703 BTC, despite operating with a smaller fleet. IREN's fleet efficiency was impressive, using over 90% of its total deployed hashrate of 50 EH/s, while MARA's 58.9 EH/s fleet operated at less than 75% utilization.
This strong performance drove IREN's stock up by over 11% intraday, reaching $18.32. The company's market cap has also surged to $4.11 billion, making it the second-largest public Bitcoin miner behind only MARA. IREN's co-founder and co-CEO, Daniel Roberts, highlighted a record revenue of $86 million for July, with $66 million in hardware profits. The company also benefited from its growing AI Cloud Services, which contributed $2.3 million in earnings.
Despite IREN's success, the company previously faced criticism from Culper Research, which called its AI projects "wildly overvalued" and underfunded. This led to a significant stock drop earlier in the year, but IREN has since rebounded, with its stock climbing more than 227% over the last four months.
Meanwhile, MARA's July performance declined from its record-high June output of 950 BTC. The company, however, remains a leader with a large Bitcoin treasury of 50,639 BTC, the second-largest corporate holding globally after MicroStrategy. Other miners like CleanSpark and Cipher Mining also continue to expand their Bitcoin holdings, with CleanSpark self-funding its operations through strategic Bitcoin sales to avoid shareholder dilution.
August 2025, Cryptoniteuae