After Bitcoin’s mining difficulty jumped to the highest value ever at 26.64 trillion, the overall hashrate slumped a hair due to the rise in difficulty and lower bitcoin price. This weekend, Bitcoin’s hashrate is coasting along at 189 exahash per second (EH/s), after dropping to a low of 167 EH/s three days ago. The lower price and difficulty rise has put a squeeze on bitcoin mining profits.
Mining difficulty makes block rewards harder to come by, Bitcoin’s lower price makes it less profitable for miners
Bitcoin’s hashrate remains high after the network saw mining difficulty hit an all-time high of 26.64 trillion on January 20, 2022. On that day, the network’s Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm (DAA) increased by 9.32% and the next DAA epoch is expected to change in 11 days.
The last change makes it a lot harder for miners to find a bitcoin (BTC) block subsidy and more difficult than ever before during the last 13 years. Another obstacle bitcoin miners faced this past week is the fact that BTC’s price shed 17.9% over the last week.
The higher difficulty and lower price make it less profitable for miners. With 189 EH/s of SHA256 hashrate dedicated to the chain, it doesn’t appear that these factors have slowed down miners. However, aggregate earnings from bitcoin mining rig statistics indicate that SHA256 miners are feeling the pressure from both falling prices and rising difficulties.
Top Six Bitcoin Mining Rigs Today Make Less Than $10 a Day, Older Machines Suffer
Currently, the top bitcoin mining rig on January 23, 2022, using $0.12 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) and current BTC exchange rates, makes around $9.41 per day. The mining rig, Bitmain’s Antminer S19 Pro processes around 110 terahash per second (TH/s). The second-most profitable miner on Sunday is Microbt’s Whatsminer M30S++ with roughly 112 TH/s.
The Whatsminer M30S++ generates an estimated profit of $9.12 per day using current BTC exchange rates. Two weeks ago, these two mining devices were getting $13-$16 profit per day, and two weeks ago the profit reached $25 per day per machine.
Following Microbt’s M30S++ machine, are three models from Bitmain stemming from the S19j series, which process between 96 to 104 TH/s. These three models make an estimated $8.23 to $8.91 per day in profit. The sixth most profitable mining rig today is Microbt’s Whatsminer M30S+, which processes around 100 terahash per second.
The M30S+ draws around 3400W of electricity from the wall and with electricity tariffs of $0.12 per kWh and current BTC exchange rates, the mining rig can benefit from $7.28 per day. Many older bitcoin mining machines, with less than 28 TH/s processing power, struggle to capture profits unless electricity rates are below $0.12 per kWh .
This means that older generation units, like the well known Bitmain S9, are far less profitable today than they were when BTC prices were higher and mining difficulty was less.
