Hive Blockchain (HIVE), a publicly traded cryptocurrency mining firm, benefited from the bull market in digital assets last quarter as bitcoin (BTC) prices rose, a report Tuesday showed.

Mining income for Hive's fiscal third quarter, ended Dec. 31, reached $13.7 million, a 174% increase from the same period a year earlier when it had mining income of $5 million, per its reported financial statements.The price of bitcoin quadrupled in 2020, and ether rose fivefold.Earnings per share: $0.05 a share for the quarter, up from $0.01 a year earlier. Gross mining margin: Stable at 78% compared to a 77% margin from a year ago.CFO Darcy Daubaras, on Tuesday's earnings call, said the company is slowly ramping up its bitcoin mining operations with 165 BTC mined in Q3 and a recent purchase of 10,500 ASIC mining machines. But the lion's share of operations are dedicated to mining ethereum (ETH). "Our bread and butter is ethereum mining," Daubaras said on Tuesday's earnings call. Hive mined 21,506 ETH in Q3, a slight decrease from 23,174 mined over the same period a year ago. Daubaras attributed the drop to the increased difficulty of mining new data blocks on the Ethereum blockchain. The difficulty level has doubled over the past year. The Vancouver company has a current market value of $1.57 billion after passing the $1 billion mark in early January. Year to date, shares of Hive have more than doubled, currently trading at C$5.83.