Mining profitability looks simple — coins mined times price, minus electricity — but three moving targets make it one of the most volatile calculations in crypto. Understanding what actually drives the number keeps you from buying hardware on a snapshot that evaporates a month later.

What the calculator is actually computing

The calculator models an expected share of pool production, not guaranteed daily payouts. It converts the rig's TH/s to the same scale as the whole network's EH/s and assumes 144 expected blocks per day. Each UTC day's coins use the effective subsidy for that day plus entered transaction fees, multiplied by uptime and reduced by the pool fee. Price stays constant at the value you enter.

Operating net subtracts running rig energy, cooling energy and allocated fixed maintenance. Hardware is a single outflow on the first production date; resale is a single inflow at the exclusive end date. Full-horizon project profit includes both. The charts, complete monthly ledger, price scenarios, rig comparison and exports all use these same dated cash flows.

The collapsed constant starting-conditions reference is separate. It uses a 365/12-day average month and a 365-day year; its maintenance is annualized from 12 fixed monthly bills. A real ownership month has its actual number of calendar days, so those reference figures need not equal a dated month or a leap-year ownership total.

The three profit killers: difficulty, price, and power

Network growth is an entered scenario, not a forecast or a live difficulty feed. The whole-network hash rate grows by your chosen percentage at each ownership-month boundary, starting after the first month. At 2% network growth, the next period's share is divided by 1.02; it does not fall by exactly 2%. This simplified model holds expected blocks per day constant rather than reproducing each protocol retarget interval.

Price sensitivity reprices the complete dated production and energy totals while preserving maintenance, hardware and resale. Operating and project break-even are different thresholds. A positive operating margin does not by itself establish hardware recovery, and resale can produce project cash recovery even when operations alone never cover the purchase.

When comparing rigs, only hash rate, running power and hardware purchase change; the remaining dated assumptions stay shared. Inspect the complete period ledger to explain differences, and compare like horizons rather than matching an average-month reference to a different calendar period. These are entered scenarios without probabilities or guarantees.

Why electricity cost dominates the outcome

For almost every miner, the difference between profit and loss is the electricity rate. At $0.10/kWh a typical 3,000-watt rig burns about $7.20 a day; at $0.03/kWh that same rig costs only $2.16. That single input often flips a machine from unprofitable to profitable without touching hashrate at all, which is why industrial miners chase stranded hydro, flared gas, and off-peak grid power.

Efficiency, measured in joules per terahash, is the hardware side of the same equation: a miner that does more hashing per watt earns more coins for the same power bill. When comparing rigs, J/TH usually tells you more about long-run profitability than sticker hashrate, because power is the cost that never stops.

Hardware ROI and the halving cycle

Hardware recovery from operations is the first UTC production day whose accumulated operating net covers the initial hardware purchase. Project cash recovery uses the same daily cash path and also recognizes resale once at the horizon. A first crossing is not a promise of lasting profitability: the cumulative balance can fall below zero again before the horizon ends.

Scheduled subsidy changes apply only from their entered UTC dates onward. They never rewrite earlier production. Bitcoin subsidy transitions depend on block height, not a fixed calendar date; enter the dates as assumptions and review them. Transaction-fee revenue remains separate and is not automatically halved with the subsidy.

These expected values omit tax, financing, depreciation, variable tariffs, pool payout thresholds and unentered equipment or operating costs. Uptime, cooling, maintenance, network growth, price and resale remain your assumptions. The calculator does not fetch a current market quote or certify any rig's investment return.