Mining Losses: Why Rigs Are Going Dark Now

Quick Summary: Bitcoin Mining Economics in 2025

• Bitcoin miners are facing extreme margin pressure due to a significant drop in hash revenue and near-record network hashrate.
• The 2024 halving cut block subsidies in half, drastically reducing miner income overnight.
• Even the latest generation of ASIC miners are struggling to achieve profitability, with payback periods extending over 1,000 days.
• Key metrics like cash flow and payback periods are critical for determining if mining operations are economically viable.
• Options for struggling miners include reducing operations, seeking cheaper energy, repurposing hardware, or exiting the market.

Why Bitcoin Mining Rigs Are Going Dark in 2025

The current landscape for Bitcoin mining illustrates one of the industry’s most challenging margin environments in recent years. Miners are grappling with significantly reduced revenues while operational costs remain high, forcing many to reconsider their strategies.

Data indicates that hash revenue for major public mining companies has plummeted from approximately $55 per petahash (PH) per day in Q3 to around $35 per PH/day presently. Crucially, their median all-in costs are hovering near $44 per PH/day. This means a substantial portion of the sector is now operating at a loss.

⚡ Insight: The Bitcoin halving event, which occurred in April 2024, cut the block reward from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. This event directly halves the primary revenue stream for miners, making profitability much harder to achieve, especially when combined with other market pressures.

Simultaneously, the network hashrate remains at near-record levels, hovering between 1.0 and 1.1 zettahashes (ZH) per second. This high hashrate signifies intense competition among miners for each newly mined Bitcoin block.

The stark reality for new hardware investments is that even the most efficient, brand-new machines are now projecting payback periods exceeding 1,000 days. With the next halving event approximately 850 days away, there’s a significant risk that hardware purchased today might not recoup its cost before the next revenue cut unless market conditions improve dramatically.

Understanding Miner Economics in 2025 After the Halving

The post-halving era has fundamentally altered the economics of Bitcoin mining, creating a scenario where every miner is competing for a considerably smaller reward pool. The halving event itself is the most significant factor impacting miner income.

The block subsidy, which forms the largest part of miner revenue, was halved in the 2024 halving, dropping from 6.25 Bitcoin (BTC) to just 3.125 BTC per block. This drastically reduced the main income source for miners overnight.

Considering the network consistently mines around 144 blocks per day, this reduction equates to approximately 450 BTC in new issuance daily, supplemented by network transaction fees. Despite this reduced reward, the network’s total hashrate has surged into the zettahash zone, averaging over 1.0 ZH/s.

📊 Insight: What is hash price in Bitcoin mining? Hash price is a key metric representing your expected USD revenue per petahash (PH) of computing power per day. At current levels, it’s approximately $35-$38 per PH/day, or about $0.03-$0.04 per terahash (TH) per day, reflecting the challenging revenue environment.

This combination of halved rewards and a soaring hashrate has driven the hash price to all-time lows. Various industry trackers report recent hash prices in the range of $35-$38 per PH/day, or roughly $0.03-$0.04 per terahash (TH) per day.

Miners must meticulously manage two primary cost categories to remain profitable:

• Capital Expenditures (CapEx): This includes the significant upfront costs for Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) machines, transformers, server racks, networking equipment, and physical infrastructure like land.
• Operating Expenditures (OpEx): Ongoing costs involve electricity prices per kilowatt-hour (kWh), hosting fees, cooling systems, routine maintenance, debt servicing, and personnel.

To achieve sustainability, mining operations must successfully navigate two critical financial tests:

1. Cash Flow Test: Determines if daily mining revenue is sufficient to cover daily operating expenses, given the current hash price and electricity rates.
2. Payback Test: Assesses whether a mining rig can reasonably recoup its initial purchase price before the next halving event or before becoming obsolete due to newer hardware.

📍 Tip: The kilowatt-hour (kWh) is the fundamental unit of energy consumption that determines your electricity bill. A miner consuming 4 kilowatts (kW) uses 4 kWh every hour. Understanding your total kWh consumption is crucial for accurately calculating daily and monthly operating costs in Bitcoin mining.

These two metrics serve as the most practical benchmarks for evaluating the economic viability of most Bitcoin mining setups.

Why Even New-Generation Bitcoin Mining Rigs Struggle to Break Even

For those operating with modern, high-efficiency mining hardware, the current economic climate presents a particularly difficult challenge. Profitability is proving elusive even for the latest technological advancements in ASIC mining.

The current top-tier mining machines, such as Bitmain’s Antminer S21 and the Whatsminer M60 series, offer impressive efficiency ratings, typically around 17-22 joules per terahash (J/TH). This represents a significant technological leap from older generations and is now considered the minimum acceptable standard for large-scale mining deployments.

⚡ Insight: A miner’s joules per terahash (J/TH) rating is a critical indicator of its energy efficiency. A lower J/TH value means the machine consumes less electricity to perform the same amount of hashing work (terahash), making it the most important factor when evaluating ASIC performance and potential profitability.

On paper, such high efficiency should translate into healthy profit margins. However, the current market realities paint a different picture:

• At a hash price of $35-$38 per PH/day, even the most efficient ASICs are barely covering their electricity costs for miners paying average industrial electricity tariffs.
• Industry analysts estimate that around $40 per PH/day represents a common break-even point for many mining operations. Any revenue below this figure means the operation is actively losing money with each hour it runs.
• Industry trackers such as TheMinerMag report that ASIC payback periods are now exceeding 1,000 days at current hardware prices and revenue levels. This extended payback period is concerning, as it is longer than the time remaining until the next Bitcoin halving event.

Some profitability analyses suggest that, given these power costs and revenue levels, purchasing Bitcoin directly on the open market might be a more straightforward and profitable strategy than mining. The optimal choice, however, remains highly dependent on an individual miner’s specific operational conditions, particularly their electricity costs and hardware efficiency.

This is precisely why rigs are going dark. In numerous mining setups, continuing to operate simply deepens the financial losses, making shutdown the only rational decision.

How to Check if Your Bitcoin Mining Machines Are Underwater

Evaluating the profitability of your mining operation is essential in the current market. Here’s a straightforward framework you can use to quickly assess your situation.

Gather Your Data:

• Identify your specific ASIC model and its rated hashrate.
• Note the machine’s efficiency rating in joules per terahash (J/TH) from the manufacturer’s specifications.
• Determine your all-in electricity cost per kilowatt-hour (kWh), including energy charges, demand fees, and any hosting provider markups.
• Factor in your mining pool fees and any other site-specific operational charges.

Estimate Daily Revenue:

• Take your total hashrate (measured in PH or TH) and multiply it by the current estimated hash price, roughly $35-$38 per PH/day.
• If you prefer working in TH units, remember that $35 per PH/day is equivalent to $0.035 per TH/day.

Calculate Daily Power Cost:

• Convert your ASIC’s efficiency and hashrate into power draw in kilowatts (kW): (J/TH x hashrate in TH) ÷ 1,000 = kW.
• Multiply the kW figure by 24 hours and your all-in kWh price to find the daily electricity cost.
• Add a small buffer, typically 5%-10%, to account for cooling systems, networking equipment, and transformer inefficiencies.

📊 Insight: Performing a stress test is vital. Check if your mining operation remains cash-flow positive if the market hash price drops by 10% and the network difficulty increases by 10%. If even this moderate scenario turns your operation negative, you’re heavily reliant on a speculative, short-term price surge in Bitcoin.

Run the Cash-Flow Test:

• Compare your estimated daily revenue against your calculated daily power cost. If revenue is consistently lower than power costs, your operation is losing money each day it remains online.
• Consider running a stress test: evaluate your profitability if the hash price were to drop by 10% and the network difficulty were to rise by 10%. If this scenario pushes your operation into the red, you are essentially banking on a rapid Bitcoin price increase to stay afloat.

Run the Payback Test:

• Divide the purchase price of your ASIC hardware by the net daily profit (daily revenue minus daily operating costs). This provides the payback period in days.
• If this calculated payback period exceeds the time remaining until the next halving (approximately 2.3 years from now), consider any new hardware purchase as a speculative investment rather than a sound business decision.

💡 Did you know? If both the cash-flow and payback tests fail consistently, your mining operation may resemble a costly form of dollar-cost averaging rather than a sustainable, profitable business venture.

Practical Options When Bitcoin Mining Becomes Unprofitable

If your financial analysis indicates that your mining operations are no longer profitable, there are several strategic options to consider. These measures can help mitigate losses or pivot your business model.

Throttle or Selectively Curtail Operations: You can reduce the performance of your ASICs by underclocking them, or shut down the least efficient machines entirely. Running operations only during off-peak electricity tariff periods can also significantly lower costs. In some regions, grid operators may even offer incentives for large mining sites to reduce power consumption during peak demand periods.

Seek Cheaper Energy Sources: For miners utilizing hosting facilities, this may involve renegotiating hosting contracts or relocating to sites with lower electricity rates. On an industrial scale, the prevailing trend is towards integrating behind-the-meter renewable energy sources, utilizing flared natural gas, or exploiting other stranded energy assets that can provide power at a lower cost than traditional grid electricity.

Repurpose Mining Infrastructure: Some operators are exploring alternative uses for their facilities, experimenting with high-performance computing (HPC) workloads, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) tasks. This involves renting out spare computing capacity to clients for AI inference or rendering projects. While not a direct replacement for mining, this transition requires adapting cooling, networking, and client management, potentially turning a specialized data center into a more versatile revenue-generating facility.

✅ Did you know? Repurposing mining sites for AI or HPC workloads involves significant adjustments. Beyond hardware, considerations include improving network latency for demanding applications, ensuring specialized cooling for dense compute racks, and building new customer relationships within the tech services sector.

Consolidate Operations or Exit the Market: For some mining entities, consolidating their operations by selling off marginal assets or merging with other miners might be a more pragmatic approach than continuing to endure the current difficult economic cycle. In some cases, completely exiting the market and liquidating hardware may be the most financially sound decision.

Impact of Miner Shutdowns on Future Bitcoin Mining and the Network

While widespread miner shutdowns might seem concerning, they do not automatically translate into systemic risk for the Bitcoin protocol. Historically, market adjustments have occurred, leading to increased efficiency.

When a significant number of miners cease operations, the Bitcoin network’s mining difficulty automatically adjusts downward. This reduces the competition for block rewards, thereby increasing the profitability for the remaining active miners. However, the current cycle presents complexities, as large public miners often possess advantageous low-cost power agreements and hedging strategies, allowing them to sustain operations longer and potentially slowing down this natural cleanup process.

📌 Takeaway: For individuals or companies considering entering Bitcoin mining in 2025 and beyond, the entry requirements have become significantly more stringent. Success now hinges on securing genuinely low-cost electricity (ideally around $0.06 per kWh all-in), utilizing current-generation ASIC hardware with sub-20-J/TH efficiency, and maintaining strict operational discipline with regular profitability checks and the willingness to power down when economics turn unfavorable.

For the Bitcoin network itself, these cyclical waves of miner shutdowns have largely functioned as a form of market reset. Capital and energy resources transition from less efficient operators to those who can mine more cost-effectively, ultimately strengthening the network’s overall resilience.

The challenging reality for smaller-scale miners is that, in many scenarios, the economics strongly favor simply purchasing Bitcoin rather than mining it. This calculus is heavily influenced by local power rates and the energy efficiency of their mining hardware.

Frequently Asked Questions About Bitcoin Mining Profitability

Why are so many Bitcoin mining rigs going offline currently?

Many Bitcoin mining rigs are going offline due to a severe squeeze on profit margins. Reduced Bitcoin block rewards after the 2024 halving, combined with high network hashrates and stable or rising operational costs (especially electricity), mean that many miners are now operating at a loss.

Can new ASIC miners still be profitable in 2025?

Profitability for new ASIC miners in 2025 is highly dependent on securing extremely low electricity costs (ideally below $0.06 per kWh) and using the most energy-efficient hardware available. Even with top-tier machines, payback periods are exceptionally long, making profitability challenging without significant improvements in Bitcoin price or operational cost reductions.

What are the main costs involved in Bitcoin mining?

The primary costs include capital expenditures (ASICs, infrastructure) and operating expenditures (electricity, cooling, maintenance, hosting fees, and staff). Electricity is often the largest and most variable operational cost, directly impacting profitability.

How can I calculate if my mining operation is profitable?

To check profitability, compare your estimated daily revenue (hashrate x hash price) against your daily operating costs, primarily electricity (kW x 24 x kWh price + buffer). Also, calculate the payback period for your hardware: hardware cost / net daily profit. If revenue doesn’t cover costs, or payback exceeds the time to the next halving, the operation is likely underwater.

What options do miners have if they are losing money?

Struggling miners can consider throttling or curtailing operations, seeking cheaper energy sources, repurposing their hardware for other computing tasks (like AI), consolidating their operations, or exiting the market altogether.

Final Thoughts on Bitcoin Mining in Challenging Times

The current Bitcoin mining environment is undeniably tough, pushing many operators to the brink. The economics have shifted dramatically following the halving, making efficiency and low-cost power paramount for survival. Miners must continuously monitor their financial metrics and adapt quickly to changing market conditions.

For the broader Bitcoin ecosystem, these periods of miner consolidation can lead to a more efficient and resilient network. Capital and energy are redirected towards operations that can thrive under current conditions, ultimately benefiting the long-term security and decentralization of Bitcoin. This cycle emphasizes that mining is a capital-intensive industry where operational discipline and strategic resource management are keys to sustained success.

Ultimately, the decision to mine versus buy Bitcoin remains a complex one, heavily influenced by individual cost structures and risk tolerance. As the industry evolves, miners who can leverage cheap power, cutting-edge technology, and disciplined operations will be best positioned to navigate future challenges and capitalize on potential opportunities.