Bitcoin mining has entered the most severe phase of business profitability in history, as noted in a report by TheMinerMag. At the beginning of December, the key profitability metric for miners plummeted to $35 per petahash per second (PH/s), which is 45% lower than the annual peak of $64 PH/s reached in July.
At current prices $BTC (around $87,000) and the level of competition worldwide, even the most efficient companies, according to the report, are operating at nearly break-even with cheap energy. Competition here means that the amount of power involved in the mining process is increasing. This means that all mined BTC is distributed among a larger number of participants.
For example, the estimated total revenues of miners in dollar equivalent amounted to about $48 million on November 30 (data from Bitcoinvisuals) at a bitcoin price of around $91,000 on that day. On the same day, the profitability index was at $38.7 PH/s. The same revenues ($48 million) were collectively received by miners on December 1, 2024, when the price of BTC was around $97,000, and the profitability index was above $62 PH/s. Thus, even if the price of bitcoin and the total revenues of miners are approximately the same over different periods, the difference in income per unit of power can be significant.
The payback period for next-generation equipment now exceeds 1000 days — significantly more than approximately 850 days before the next halving, as noted by TheMinerMag.
Thus, halving also affects miners' revenues. A comparable level of daily income of $48 million was achieved in 2023, 2021, and even in 2017. However, unlike in 2017, the bitcoin network's power has increased more than 70 times, whereas the price has increased approximately 6 times (price and data from December 11, 2017, to December 2, 2025, according to Bitcoinvisuals).
As a solution to the declining revenue problem, experts note the shift of miners to new business models. Seven out of ten largest public mining companies are already generating revenue from working with AI or high-performance computing, while the others are preparing relevant projects, as previously reported by CryptoSlate.
The head of the largest mining company in the U.S., MARA Holdings, Fred Thiel, also stated that the industry is expecting a major transformation in the coming years. According to him, outdated and inefficient business models will cease to be profitable, and only companies with access to cheap energy or those who have diversified their activities beyond mining (for example, into artificial intelligence) will survive.
Examining the market of mining companies traded on exchanges (i.e., publicly reporting on their activities), TheMinerMag also noted a trend towards strengthening the organizations' balances. A striking example is CleanSpark, which recently raised $1 billion in investments and paid off a loan secured by bitcoins (when the collateral price falls, the lender can liquidate it).
Changes are also noted in the capital market. If in the third quarter miners attracted mainly 'cheap' money through the issuance of low-interest bonds, the picture changes in the fourth. Capital is now coming through secured bonds with a coupon of about 7% — and only two companies, Cipher and Terawulf, have raised nearly $5 billion. This suggests that the largest volume in the history of the sector will be raised in the fourth quarter, as mentioned in the report.
In these conditions, experts are questioning whether the revenues from high-performance computing and artificial intelligence can scale quickly enough to offset both the collapse in mining profitability and the rise in corporate debt.
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