Bitcoin miners Riot Platforms and CleanSpark boosted their crypto production in August, according to operational updates on Wednesday.
Riot Platforms mined 477 BTC in August, up from 322 BTC year-over-year. The output represents a 48% increase compared to August 2024. According to the company, it sold 450 BTC for net proceeds of $51.8 billion during the month, and now holds 19,309 BTC, a 92.7% increase in 12 months.
Meanwhile, CleanSpark mined 657 BTC in August, up from 478 BTC during the same month in 2024. The jump amounts to a year-over-year increase of 37.5%. The company sold 533.5 BTC for $60.7 million last month.
The company announced in April that it would start selling BTC to become financially self-sufficient. CleanSpark now holds 12,827 BTC, a 69.7% increase over the period.
The output increase comes despite a significant year-over-year rise in Bitcoin mining difficulty.
BTC mining difficulty jumps in 2025
Over the past 12 months, Bitcoin mining difficulty has surged 44.9%, rising to 129.7 trillion this year from 89.5 trillion in August 2024, CoinWarz data shows.
Mining difficulty in Bitcoin refers to how challenging it is for miners to solve the puzzles that confirm transactions and add blocks to the Bitcoin blockchain. The difficulty shifts with changes in hashrate and miner activity, sometimes pushing miners to upgrade rigs, expand data centers or rethink their strategies.
Despite the surge in mining difficulty, both Riot and CleanSpark reached a significantly higher average operational hash rate year-over-year.
Riot’s average operational hash rate rose to 31.4 EH/s in August 2025 compared to 14.5 EH/s in August 2024, a 116.6% jump over the past year. CleanSpark’s rose to 43.3 EH/s from 21.3 EH/s, representing a 103.3% increase during the period.
Some miners are choosing to branch out from Bitcoin mining, exploring incremental sources of revenue. For instance, Hut 8 is developing four new data centers in the United States for high-performance computing, such as artificial intelligence workloads.
Hive Digital Technologies and Australian miner Iren have diversified their businesses as well. In February, Riot appointed an adviser with experience pivoting Bitcoin mining assets to AI.
Magazine: AI may already use more power than Bitcoin — and it threatens Bitcoin mining
