Bitcoin mining profitability has plummeted to unprecedented lows in recent months, driven by a perfect storm of declining cryptocurrency prices, surging network difficulty, and subdued transaction fees.
As of early December 2025, key metrics like hashprice—a measure of daily revenue per terahash of computing power—have dipped below $35 per petahash per second (PH/s), marking the lowest levels in Bitcoin’s history.
This has pushed many miners into “survival mode,” with equipment payback periods stretching beyond 1,200 days and operational costs averaging $44–$45 per PH/s, leaving slim-to-negative margins for all but the most efficient operators.
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Key Factors Behind the Downturn
Several interconnected pressures are squeezing miners: BTC has fallen around 20% from its 2025 peaks near $110,000, trading in the $80,000–$90,000 range. This directly erodes revenue from block rewards currently 3.125 BTC per block post-2024 halving.
The network hashrate hit a new high of 1.16 zettahashes per second (ZH/s) in October, pushing mining difficulty to an all-time high of 156 trillion. The next adjustment on December 11 is forecast to rise further to 149.8 trillion, intensifying competition.
Average fees are at multi-year lows ~$0.58 per high-priority transaction, reducing ancillary revenue as on-chain activity cools. Electricity, hardware depreciation, and financing expenses have climbed, with all-in mining costs for one BTC reaching $137,800 cash costs at $74,600.
Public miners’ market caps dropped 16% in November alone. These conditions mark the fourth consecutive month of declining profitability, per JPMorgan analysis, with daily block rewards averaging $41,400 per exahash—down 14% from October and 20% year-over-year.
Faced with breakeven or losses, 70% of top public miners like Marathon Digital, Riot Platforms, CleanSpark are diversifying into AI/high-performance computing (HPC). They’ve raised $6 billion for GPU infrastructure and secured $15.5 billion in contracts, including IREN’s $9.7 billion five-year deal with Microsoft.
However, AI revenue remains too nascent to fully offset mining losses, leading to predictions of a “shakeout” where inefficient operators capitulate and sell BTC holdings—potentially creating short-term supply pressure but long-term network stabilization.
Despite the gloom, some optimism persists: JPMorgan recently upgraded stocks like CleanSpark and Cipher Mining, sparking a rally in miner equities. Miners are also stockpiling BTC like MARA holds 53,250 BTC worth $5.6 billion, betting on a price rebound.
For a typical modern ASIC miner (e.g., 390 TH/s hashrate, 7,215W power draw at $0.05/kWh electricity): Daily gross revenue: ~$0.015–$0.02 per TH/s. Daily net profit: As low as $6.27 after costs for a full rig—barely covering expenses.
~$90,000+ for most setups; below that, operations turn unprofitable. While Bitcoin’s network security is at peak strength, miner economics are in crisis—echoing past cycle bottoms. Survival hinges on BTC climbing above $90,000 or successful AI transitions.
For individual miners, now’s the time to audit costs or consider hosting in low-energy regions; for investors, this could signal a contrarian entry if capitulation accelerates.
As of December 2025, Ethereum mining as we knew it—GPU-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) operations—has been obsolete for over three years, thanks to “The Merge” upgrade in September 2022.
This shift to proof-of-stake (PoS) ended traditional mining on the mainnet, redirecting the ecosystem toward staking and validator nodes. While this made Ethereum 99.95% more energy-efficient and scalable, it left former miners grappling with sunk costs in hardware and disrupted revenue streams.
ETC mining uses similar hardware but yields ~$0.01-0.02/TH/s daily—viable only with cheap electricity <$0.05/kWh. Broader altcoin shifts like Monero or Ravencoin face ASIC resistance but volatile rewards.
Post-Merge, ~37% of blocks remain OFAC-compliant censoring sanctioned txs, down from 78%, but MEV-Boost relays centralize block building. Validators often large pools exploit sequencing, creating bottlenecks akin to pre-Merge mining pools.
In 2025, small miners dominate Reddit threads lamenting “get-rich-quick” failures, while firms like BitMine report $4B losses on ETH exposure. Miners aren’t standing still—70%+ have diversified: Staking as the New “Mining”: Lock ETH to validate blocks and earn ~3-5% APY.
Pools like Lido lower barriers min. ~0.01 ETH, but centralization risks persist. ETC leads for GPU reuse, followed by Ravencoin and Monero. Cloud mining platforms like HashJ or IeByte offer ETH-payout proxies without hardware, using GPU scheduling for 10-20% returns.
Ex-miners like CoreWeave repurpose rigs for AI cloud services, securing $15B+ contracts. Cysic’s ComputeFi turns GPUs into liquid resources for ZK-proofs and Ethereum block proving. Protocols like Lithos (on Ergo) introduce decentralized PoW with fraud proofs, slashing invalid work for trustless pools.
Public firms blend BTC mining with ETH staking, while cloud/community models emerge to sidestep hardware woes. Ethereum’s PoS era prioritizes accessibility over raw compute, but challenges like L1 revenue erosion (vs. L2s) and ETH’s SoV competition from stablecoins persist.
In essence, Ethereum “mining” challenges are now staking and adaptation hurdles—echoing Bitcoin’s 2025 lows but with greener upside. If BTC rebounds to $120K, ETH could hit $10K, buoying yields. Stay lean, diversify, and watch L2s: they’re the real profitability frontier.