Bitcoin Mining Enters an Industrial Era as Hashrate Soars and Margins Tighten

Bitcoin’s mining network has reached a new structural phase, sustaining more than 1 zettahash per second on a seven-day average. This milestone signals a long-term shift rather than a temporary spike, driven by aggressive hardware upgrades, new data center construction, and the expansion of large-scale industrial mining operations. Mining is no longer dominated by marginal players; instead, it increasingly resembles critical energy infrastructure. As a result, competition for block rewards has intensified sharply across the network.

Despite this explosive hashrate growth, revenue per unit of computing power has fallen into one of the tightest ranges on record. According to GoMining, miner earnings are now determined almost entirely by Bitcoin’s price and network difficulty. Traditional buffers such as transaction fee spikes and higher block subsidies have largely disappeared, leaving miners exposed to thinner margins even as capital expenditure and power consumption rise.

This pressure became visible in on-chain activity throughout 2025. For the first time since April 2023, the Bitcoin mempool cleared completely on multiple occasions, meaning transactions were confirmed immediately even at the lowest possible fees. During these periods of low network congestion, miners earned virtually nothing from transaction fees and had to rely almost entirely on block subsidies and Bitcoin’s market price for revenue.

The situation worsened after the 2024 halving reduced the block subsidy to 3.125 BTC. Transaction fees failed to compensate for the lost issuance, accounting for less than 1% of total block rewards for most of 2025. This dynamic left miner economics highly sensitive to price fluctuations, with few internal stabilizers remaining.

The impact is clearly reflected in hashprice, which measures daily revenue per unit of hashrate. Hashprice fell to record lows near $35 per petahash per day in November and ended the year around $38, far below historical norms. At current difficulty levels and electricity costs near $0.08 per kWh, popular S21-series miners approach breakeven between $69,000 and $74,000 per Bitcoin. While this does not create a hard price floor, it establishes an important economic threshold. If prices remain below these shutdown levels, weaker miners may be forced to sell reserves or power down, potentially amplifying volatility in an already tight market.