Bitcoin mining in 2025: the toughest profit squeeze on record amid an all-time high

Record-high bitcoin, record-low mining margins, as AI diversification accelerates.

Bitcoin set a new all-time high, yet miners faced the harshest operating economics on record. Their responses ranged from ramping up hashrate to accelerating diversification into AI.

A look back at what else 2025 brought to the business of mining the first cryptocurrency.

The network strengthened markedly

Hashrate started the year around 800 EH/s and in October hit a record 1.15 ZH/s (7 DMA). After the autumn market sell-off the metric corrected, but held the 1 ZH/s level reached at end-August.

Growth since January was roughly 25%. According to Coin Metrics, mass deployment of Antminer S21 rigs—at 13–16.5 J/TH depending on model—made a significant contribution. Their share of total hashrate reached about 20% by October.

The rally that began after Donald Trump was elected US president in November 2024 brought back rather dated Whatsminer M32 units. Launched in August 2020, they run at about 50 J/TH. Since January the share of Antminer S9s—debuted in 2017 at ~93 J/TH—also rose. Together those ASICs generate ~15% of hashrate. 

The global fleet is dominated by various Antminer S19 models, which account for roughly half of network compute.

Difficulty, which correlates with hashrate, reached an all-time high of 155.98 T in late October. Against this backdrop, MARA Holdings’ CEO Fred Thiel stated that the industry has entered an extremely challenging period owing to rising competition and falling profitability.  

The most severe profitability crunch

Through the year miners’ revenue largely tracked bitcoin’s price. By July, fees’ share of total revenue had fallen below 1%. Income came almost entirely from the block subsidy. Following the April 2024 halving it is 3.125 BTC—around 450 BTC per day on average.

Monthly revenue thus ranged from about ~$1.19bn (April) to about ~$1.63bn (August).

According to CoinShares, in Q2 the average direct cash cost to mine one bitcoin for public miners was roughly $74,600. Including non-cash items such as depreciation and stock-based compensation it rose to $137,800.

Bitcoin reached its record $126,080 only in early October.

Hashprice hit a year-to-date peak in July at $63.9 per PH/s per day. In subsequent months the profitability metric slid steadily under the weight of rising difficulty and competition. 

After November’s plunge below $83,000, hashprice hit a yearly low of roughly $35 per PH/s. Despite the subsequent rebound, it failed to recover above $40.

Meanwhile the median “hash cost” for public miners in Q3 stood at about $44 per PH/s. The figure includes equipment operating costs, corporate expenses and financing service. It signalled that even operators with efficient fleets and competitive power prices were hovering around breakeven.

TheMinerMag’s analysts acknowledged that miners faced the toughest profitability conditions in history.

Payback periods for the latest-generation rigs exceeded 1,000 days—well longer than the time left until the next halving. Around April 2028 the block reward will drop to 1.5625 BTC.

CoinShares expects hashprice to remain in a $37–55 range until then. Breaking out will require a substantial rise in bitcoin’s price, as higher hashrate would absorb a moderate rally. The firm estimates network compute will reach 2 ZH/s in early 2027.

Commenting on the industry’s strained economics, James Butterfill, head of research at CoinShares, said:

“Against this backdrop, a clear strategic divergence has formed in the industry. A growing cohort of miners has accelerated its pivot to AI and high-performance computing infrastructure, seeking to diversify the business away from an increasingly competitive and less profitable bitcoin mining.”

Diversification into AI gathers pace

The pivot from bitcoin mining towards serving the higher-margin needs of artificial intelligence was already evident last year. In 2025 the trend broadened and deals reached multibillion-dollar scale.

At the SALT conference in Jackson Hole in August, CleanSpark CEO Matt Schultz noted that where industry participants once spoke about hashrate, they now “discuss how to monetise megawatts”. TeraWulf CFO Patrick Flaherty admitted that even with the digital gold above $110,000 (at the time), electricity costs swallow up to half of miners’ revenue.

CleanSpark doubled annual revenue thanks to AI initiatives. Others also moved:

• TeraWulf signed a 10-year contract with cloud platform Fluidstack totalling $3.7bn. Google acted as a financial guarantor, becoming the miner’s largest shareholder;   
• Cipher Mining entered into a lease with Amazon Web Services (AWS) worth $5.5bn to support AI compute;
• IREN will provide Microsoft with GPU-based cloud services. The five-year agreement totals about $9.7bn. 

One of the oldest public miners, Bitfarms, announced it would gradually wind down bitcoin mining by 2027 and pivot to AI infrastructure. 

Galaxy Digital also decided to fully repurpose its Helios mining centre for AI under an agreement with the hyperscaler CoreWeave. In late 2022 Mike Novogratz’s firm bought the site for $65m from Argo Blockchain, which was facing financial difficulties, becoming a significant host for miners.

Riot Platforms vice-president Josh Kane said the firm no longer views mining as an end in itself, but rather as a means to that end. The company’s main objective is to maximise the profit it can extract from 

electricity, including through higher-margin lines of business.

Even miners leaning into AI kept expanding their own hashrate, albeit at different speeds.

An exception among large public firms was Core Scientific, which CoreWeave sought to acquire for $9bn. The hyperscaler was already a partner and suggested that after a merger crypto-mining would be wound down gradually. Core Scientific’s major shareholders rejected the deal as undervalued.

One reason why even miners aggressively expanding in AI kept adding hashrate is the cash flow generated by established crypto mining. It helps fund current operations, as repurposing infrastructure demands significant capital and time.

CoinShares noted that building and operating a bitcoin mine typically costs about $700,000–1m per MW, whereas an AI data centre can reach $20m. The sizeable gap reflects redundancy and reliability requirements needed to achieve 99.99% uptime.

To cover growing costs—both for modernising mining fleets and modifying infrastructure for high-performance computing—companies tapped financing aggressively. As a result, miners’ aggregate debt rose sixfold over the year, from $2.1bn to $12.7bn.

Another motive for maintaining a decent slice of bitcoin hashrate was the prospect of competitors shutting down en masse after prolonged losses. In that scenario the profitability of those left “in the game” would jump as network difficulty fell. 

MARA’s chief put it bluntly. The firm’s aim is to keep mining costs low enough that at least 75% of competitors are forced offline. But lowering unit costs is every operator’s goal—companies are tidying up balance-sheets, cutting corporate overheads and boosting fleet efficiency. Equipment makers are responding to miners’ demands.

ASIC makers kept up the arms race

In May Bitmain unveiled the flagship Antminer S23 Hydro with a stated efficiency of 9.5 J/TH. The comparison below shows how the leading manufacturer improved this metric over the past two years.

In October Canaan showcased a new generation of ASIC miners. The line includes two air-cooled models—Avalon A16 (282 TH/s) and Avalon A16XP (300 TH/s)—with energy efficiency of 13.8 J/TH and 12.8 J/TH, respectively.

Early in the year the company also launched Avalon Mini 3 and Nano 3S, combining bitcoin mining and residential heating. Avalon Mini 3 delivers 37.5 TH/s and up to 800 W of heating power. Avalon Nano 3S at 6 TH/s is a more capable variant of an existing model.

In August Jack Dorsey’s Block introduced modular Proto Rig units for bitcoin mining. According to the developers, the devices offer a longer lifespan and improved repairability, cutting mining costs by 15–20%.

Under its roadmap, Bitdeer presented the SEALMINER A3 series in September. The air-cooled ASIC delivers 260 TH/s at 14 J/TH. The A3 Hydro model offers 500 TH/s at 13.5 J/TH.

In November the US company Auradine opened pre-orders for third-generation Teraflux units. The firm says the miners are fully designed and manufactured in the United States. In Eco mode the air-cooled model delivers 240 TH/s at 10.3 J/TH. 

A liquid-cooling system delivers 600 TH/s at 9.8 J/TH. An immersion variant outputs 240 TH/s at the same efficiency.

In December, at the Bitcoin MENA 2025 conference in Abu Dhabi, MicroBT unveiled the new WhatsMiner M70 series. The line is offered in three efficiency classes:

• 14.5 J/TH (base model M70);
• 13.5 J/TH (M70S);
• 12.5 J/TH (M70S+).

Air-cooled units range from 214 TH/s to 244 TH/s. 

Immersion-cooled variants (M76 and M78) deliver 336–476 TH/s.

In short, over the past year all leading bitcoin-miner manufacturers refreshed their line-ups.

In February it emerged that import problems that arose in the autumn of 2024 with last-generation Antminer S21 and T21 units had worsened. Customs began detaining products from MicroBT and Canaan, also China-based. According to Bloomberg, Bitmain is the subject of a US investigation over potential national-security risks. 

Meanwhile, the trend of opening assembly plants in the United States continued to expand. The process accelerated after Trump’s announcement of “liberating tariffs”. Levies of 24–36% on goods from Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia—home to most ASIC production—threatened to hit demand from American miners hard. In 2024 they imported $2.3bn worth of equipment.

Following Canaan, MicroBT and Bitmain, Bitdeer also announced localisation in the United States.

Some had suggested that tariff wars might undermine America’s hashrate dominance, but that did not happen. 

Mining geography—the leader is unchanged 

By end-Q3 the US share of global hashrate was close to 40%. Russia retained second place with 15.5%, and China exceeded 14%.  

Together, the three controlled about 67.5% of network compute. Trends diverged: contrary to fears, the United States kept extending its lead, while Russia gradually lost ground.

China’s mining saga makes clear that access to cheap power remains one of the most important determinants of geography. Reuters confirmed that after the authorities banned crypto mining in 2021 it did not stop, but went underground. 

After China’s share of global hashrate fell to zero, it gradually recovered. Surplus electricity in former mining hubs such as Xinjiang and Sichuan helped, as owners of remote coal, wind and hydro plants often have no customers.

Despite fears of a miner exodus from the US over “Trump tariffs”, hashrate elsewhere showed little change. Neighbouring Canada held around 3%. Paraguay (3.9%), Oman (2.9%) and Ethiopia (1.9%) rounded out the top ten.

Not every country’s infrastructure can support crypto-mining loads. In Kyrgyzstan, an electricity shortage forced the authorities to shut down all mining farms. Power-saving measures will last until the end of the heating season. 

Iran continued its crackdown on illegal miners—officials say more than 95% of the country’s 427,000 devices operate without a licence.  

New pockets of support for bitcoin’s network emerged. In March, Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko approved data-centre construction in Mogilev region. Pakistan said it intends to direct surplus electricity to cryptocurrency mining and to data centres serving AI.  

Turkmenistan’s president Serdar Berdimuhamedov signed a virtual-assets law that permits mining and crypto exchanges. It takes effect on January 1st 2026.

By pool, Foundry USA (25.7%) underlines America’s dominance of hashrate. Add MARA Pool (4.3%) and Luxor (3.2%).

Also in the top three are Bitmain-affiliated AntPool (22.1%) and F2Pool (13%), both registered in China.

Together, platforms from the two leading countries in bitcoin mining control more than two-thirds of network compute. 

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AI revenues still account for a small share of miners’ total takings, but will grow as data centres are repurposed. Capex trends suggest a significant portion of bitcoin mining will again shift from the large data centres that have dominated in recent years to smaller sites.

In a more distributed model, miners will target cheap sources of energy neglected by traditional consumers—idle capacity at remote power plants, flared gas at oilfields and other wasted resources. Participating in grid balancing is another option. That implies farms in container or even trailer form factors, compact and mobile.  

A little over two years remain until the next halving. With a step-change in price and/or on-chain activity unlikely in that period, miners will have to adapt to economics that will tighten further after the next cut to the block reward.