Bitcoin Miner Riot Platforms' Second-Quarter Loss Widens to $84.4M as Costs Surge

• Riot attributes the increase in losses to selling, general and administrative expenses of $61.2 million compared with $41.4 a year ago.
• The bitcoin "halving", which cuts the reward miners receive for adding new blocks to the network, lower number of bitcoin that Riot produced during the quarter.

Bitcoin {{BTC}} mining firm Riot Platforms (RIOT) said its second-quarter loss trebled from the year before as general running costs climbed 48%.

The Castle Rock, Colo.-based company posted a net loss of $84.4 million, or $0.32 per share. Selling, general and administrative expenses rose to $61.2 million. More than half the figure, $32.1 million, comprised stock compensation expenses related to new grants under a long-term incentive program. The net loss for the quarter also included a $76.4 million drop in the fair value of bitcoin it holds.

April's Bitcoin halving, which cuts the reward miners receive for adding new blocks to the blockchain by 50%, reduced the number of bitcoin Riot produced during the quarter. The company mined 844 BTC, 52% less than in the previous second quarter.

The cost to mine the bitcoin jumped to $25,327 from $5,734 due to a 68% increase in the network's hashrate. Hashrate is a measurement of the total computational power used to process transactions on the network. A higher hashrate means miners need to dispatch more power, incurring higher costs, in order to produce each BTC.

RIOT shares fell 0.3% in pre-market trading as of 09:35 UTC on Thursday. Bitcoin has dropped 2.7% in the past 24 hours, while the CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20), a measure of the broader crypto market, has lost 4.5%.

Read More: The Clock Has Ticked on Bitcoin's Post Halving Surge, 100 Days After the Latest Quadrennial Halving