Following Bitcoin's plunge below the $100,000 level, miners are finding it much more difficult to make money.
With electricity costing $0.06 per kWh, even those miners who use efficient mining machines (27.5 watts per terahash) are barely breaking even at around $97,000 per Bitcoin.
Machines that are less efficient or have higher electricity costs are already be losing money.
Which miners are still profitable?
The data provided by F2Pool shows a dramatic difference in profitability based on a miner's efficiency.
The most efficient hardware, such as the Antminer S21 XP Hyd. (12.0 W/T), has an electricity cost rate of only 43% of the current BTC price. This means it only needs Bitcoin to be at $41,585 to break even on electricity. This elite tier of hardware remains highly profitable at the current price level.
The other high-efficiency S21 models are close behind: all of them would manage to remain profitable with the Bitcoin price under $60,000.
In stark contrast, many older and less efficient machines are currently unprofitable.
For example, the Whatsminer M53 needs the price to be $100,694, and the Antminer S19 requires $118,641. The least efficient hardware on the list, the CopyMiner C7, needs an unsustainable price of $130,909 just to cover its electricity.
Bitcoin is currently changing hands at $95,290 following an enormous price plunge.
Dan Burgin
Vladislav Sopov
U.Today Editorial Team