The only two numbers that matter
Strip away the noise and mining profitability is a subtraction. Revenue minus cost.
Revenue is set by the network, not by you. Your machine earns in proportion to its share of total hashrate, and that share is worth whatever the Bitcoin price and transaction fees make it worth. The industry compresses this into one figure called hashprice: the dollars the network pays per unit of hashrate per day. When hashprice falls, every miner on earth earns less for the same work on the same day.
Cost is almost entirely electricity. Power draw in kilowatts × 24 hours × your rate per kWh. Hardware depreciation matters for payback, but on a running basis it is the power bill that decides whether a machine stays switched on.
That asymmetry is the whole game: you cannot control revenue, so the only durable advantage in mining is a low, stable cost of power — which is why industrial hosting exists.
Why mining gets harder on a schedule
Two mechanisms push against you over time, and both are built into Bitcoin.
Difficulty adjustment. Bitcoin retargets mining difficulty every 2,016 blocks, roughly every two weeks, so that blocks keep arriving about every ten minutes regardless of how much hashrate is competing. When more machines join the network, difficulty rises and every existing machine earns proportionally less. Your hardware does not slow down; its slice of the pie shrinks.
The halving. Roughly every four years the block subsidy halves. The April 2024 halving cut it from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC per block, and the next one is expected around 2028. Overnight, the issuance half of mining revenue is cut in two. Historically price has eventually absorbed it; there is no rule that says it must.
The practical consequence: a machine that is marginal today will be unprofitable later unless the Bitcoin price rises. Headroom between your power price and your break-even price is not a luxury, it is how long your hardware stays in service.
Why home mining usually loses
The arithmetic is unforgiving, and it has very little to do with enthusiasm.
- The rate. Residential electricity in most of Canada and the US, once delivery and regulatory charges are counted, sits above or near the break-even price of all but the newest machines. An Antminer T21 at $0.089 per kWh has essentially no room.
- The circuit. A 3.5 kW machine needs a dedicated 240 V circuit. That is an electrician, a permit and a panel with capacity to spare.
- The noise. An air-cooled ASIC at full load runs at roughly the noise level of a vacuum cleaner, continuously, day and night.
- The heat. Every watt becomes heat in your house. Pleasant in a Canadian February; a serious problem in July, when you then pay to air-condition it away.
- The failures. Fans and power supplies are consumables. At home, a failure is downtime until you notice and fix it.
Hosting trades all of that for a rate per kilowatt-hour. The question is not "is mining profitable" in the abstract — it is "is mining profitable at my power price", and for most people at home the answer is no. The calculator will show you exactly where your own rate lands.
What profitable mining actually looks like
The operators who survive cycles tend to share four things.
- Efficient hardware. Efficiency in J/TH is what decides your break-even price. Buying a cheap, inefficient machine is buying a shorter runway.
- A low, predictable power price. Not just low today — contractually stable, so a difficulty increase does not immediately put you underwater.
- High uptime. Every offline hour is revenue you never get back. Cooling, monitoring and on-site repair are the difference between 95% and 99% uptime, and across a year that gap is substantial.
- Honest accounting. Count depreciation and the Bitcoin price you actually sell at, not just daily gross profit.
Our own position: at $0.072–$0.089 USDT/kWh all-inclusive, the efficient end of our fleet has real headroom and the oldest machines have very little. We publish the break-even figures precisely so you can see which is which before you commit — including the ones that do not flatter us, like the T21.
If you want the provider-selection side of this, read how to choose a Bitcoin miner hosting provider. If you want the cost side, hosting cost per kWh breaks down what you pay for.
What we will not tell you
We will not forecast the Bitcoin price, and we will not guarantee returns. Any hosting provider that does is telling you something about themselves rather than about mining.
What we will do is give you the real inputs — our rate, our uptime practices, the manufacturer specifications and the break-even arithmetic — and let you decide. Everything on this page is an estimate derived from published figures; see our editorial policy for how we produce them. None of it is financial advice, and mining income is taxable in most jurisdictions, which is a conversation for your accountant.