(Bloomberg) -- Stronghold Digital Mining Inc. is weighing the sale of the company and other alternatives with competition increasing in the wake of a Bitcoin code update called the “halving” that drastically reduces mining revenue.

The Kennerdell, Pennsylvania-based miner, which burns waste coal to generate energy to power the specialized computers used to validate transactions on the blockchain, said in a statement Thursday that the decision is based on what the board considers to be a dislocation in Stronghold’s valuation compared with that of its industry peers.

Stronghold’s shares jumped as much as 15% to $3.56 as of 9:45 a.m. in New York. The stock is still down around 53% this year. The shares traded as high as $332.60 in November 2021.

Profit margins have been in decline for the industry as more deep-pocketed miners come in. The fourth halving, which took place last month, slashed daily production from 900 to 450, resulting in $10 billion in annual revenue losses for the industry at that time. 

Hashprice, a key indicator of revenue for Bitcoin miners, has hit record lows recently, days after the halving while mining difficulty, a measure of computing power to mine the digital asset, continues to climb. The higher that figure is, the more competitive and difficult it is to earn the cryptocurrency. 

The halving cuts the miner rewards to maintain a hard cap of 21 million tokens with the goal to keep the cryptocurrency from becoming inflationary. 

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