Bitcoin Mining Profitability in 2026: A Practical Framework
How to model mining profitability honestly, hashprice, power costs, difficulty growth, and depreciation.
Hashprice as the master metric
Hashprice, daily revenue per TH/s of capacity, collapses bitcoin price, difficulty and fees into one number. Track it daily and benchmark your operation's all-in cost against it.
The cost stack
Direct costs: power (typically 60–80% of opex), hosting or facility, pool fees. Indirect: hardware depreciation, financing, opportunity cost of capital. Many small operators forget depreciation until upgrade time arrives.
Modelling realistic scenarios
Run three cases: bitcoin flat, +50%, –50%. In all three, model difficulty rising 4–8% per month. If your operation only works in the bull case, you are not modelling, you are gambling.
When buying BTC outperforms mining
After accounting for capex, opex and depreciation, simply buying bitcoin on a regulated venue like Bybit often outperforms small-scale mining on a risk-adjusted basis.
Frequently asked questions
What hashprice do miners need to be profitable?
It varies with power cost, but most modern fleets need $0.05/TH/day or higher to cover opex.
How fast does difficulty grow?
Typically 4–8% per month over a cycle, though monthly variance is high.
Should I include depreciation?
Yes, ASICs are wasting assets, and ignoring depreciation overstates real margin.
Where can I track hashprice?
Public dashboards like Hashrate Index and Luxor publish daily hashprice.
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