Keeping a Bitcoin miner running makes economic sense when its expected mining revenue exceeds the costs you would avoid by switching it off over the same period. That decision depends on your ASIC’s power use, electricity and hosting terms, actual performance, and expected mining earnings—not one industry-wide “cost to mine one Bitcoin.”

You do not need to predict Bitcoin’s future price to assess today’s operating economics. For the months ahead, use a few price and difficulty scenarios to see how much room the operation has before its margin disappears.

Separate the Decision You Are Actually Making

Different mining decisions require different comparisons:

• Keep running or pause: Compare expected revenue with the costs avoided by shutting down over the chosen period. Some hosting and other contractual charges may continue either way.
• Repair or retire: Compare the expected benefit of restored operation with the repair cost, likely downtime, and the equipment’s remaining useful life.
• Keep or sell: Compare expected future net operating cash flows and eventual resale value with the proceeds available from selling now, accounting for exit costs and contractual obligations.
• Replace or expand: Include the delivered and installed cost of new ASICs, alongside their expected operating performance. For replacement, compare the additional benefit of the new unit with keeping the existing one.

A machine can cover its avoidable operating costs while remaining a poor candidate for further investment. An older ASIC can also remain viable on inexpensive power. Whether it is fully depreciated does not determine whether it should run today.

Understand What Pool Data Actually Shows You

An ASIC’s dashboard shows device-reported hashrate, based on its firmware’s reporting method. A pool separately estimates hashrate from submitted shares over a defined period. Neither reading should be interpreted without considering its measurement window.

Pool shares meet a target that is easier to satisfy than Bitcoin’s network block target. This lets the pool estimate contributed work from shares submitted far more frequently than valid blocks are found. The pool’s hashrate figure is therefore a statistical estimate, rather than a direct reading from the ASIC (Bitcoin Developer Guide).

Credited earnings are different again. They depend on contributed work, the payment method, pool fees, and the applicable calculation and settlement rules. Depending on the method, pool luck also affects earnings over the observation period.

ViaBTC’s published rules currently list:

• PPS+: The block subsidy component uses PPS with a 4% fee and hourly settlement. Transaction fees use PPLNS with a 2% fee.
• PPLNS: Both the subsidy and transaction fees use PPLNS with a 2% fee. Distribution is based on contributed hashrate over the last five difficulty rounds once a block reaches six confirmations.

PPS+ reduces exposure to pool block-finding variance for the subsidy component. PPLNS earnings depend more directly on the pool’s block-finding results. The fee difference also affects expected net earnings, so the methods should not be described as producing identical long-term returns. Lower fees alone do not guarantee higher realized earnings over a particular period (ViaBTC Help Center).

Use representative earnings data and account for settlement timing before comparing it with operating costs. Credits received today may not correspond exactly to work performed today, and a withdrawal to your wallet is not the same event as earning mining rewards.

Calculate the Costs You Actually Avoid by Turning a Miner Off

Start by putting revenue and costs in the same currency and time period. For a daily estimate:

Expected daily USD revenue = expected daily BTC earnings after pool fees × assumed BTC/USD price

Then calculate:

Expected daily USD revenue − daily costs avoided by shutting down = estimated daily operating contribution

“Operating contribution” here is a simple calculation for the decision, not a standardized mining KPI or a measure of total business profitability. A positive result supports continued operation relative to pausing under those assumptions; selling or replacing the equipment requires a separate comparison.

Use recent earnings as a starting point, adjusting for differences in difficulty, uptime, hardware performance, and transaction-fee conditions. Do not assume one unusually strong or weak payout day represents future earnings.

Estimate electricity use

For constant power draw during operation:

Daily operating electricity cost = power draw (kW) × operating hours per day × electricity price ($/kWh)

Using 24 hours assumes continuous operation at that power level. For curtailed or variable operation, calculate energy use for the relevant operating periods and account for material idle consumption separately. Separately billed cooling electricity should also be included once.

If power draw is not measured, a specification-based estimate is:

Power draw (kW) = [hashrate (TH/s) × efficiency (J/TH)] ÷ 1,000

The units are consistent: TH/s × J/TH gives joules per second, or watts. Dividing by 1,000 converts watts to kilowatts.

Use hashrate and efficiency figures from the same operating mode and conditions. An overclocked or underclocked ASIC may differ from its default specifications. Prefer measured electrical consumption when available; a pool’s hashrate estimate alone cannot establish the machine’s power draw or electrical efficiency.

Keep the shutdown comparison consistent

• Pool fees: Do not deduct them again if expected BTC earnings are already net of fees.
• Hosting: Separate charges that stop or fall during shutdown from charges that continue. If the hosting tariff includes electricity, do not add the same electricity cost again.
• Demand charges and taxes: Include only the amount the operating decision actually changes. Stopping one ASIC may not reduce a demand charge based on a site’s billing peak.
• Repairs: Exclude money already spent. Include expected additional repair or maintenance costs attributable to continued operation over the assessment period. Evaluate a specific major repair separately.
• Curtailment: Match revenue and energy use to the operating schedule. If pausing earns compensation, include that benefit on the shutdown side of the comparison without counting it again as an electricity saving.
• Depreciation: Accounting depreciation does not disappear when a machine is switched off today. Hardware investment and resale value still matter when evaluating replacement, sale, and longer-term returns.

Check Whether Underperformance Is Fixable

Before deciding an ASIC is uneconomic, confirm whether it is performing as expected. Compare compatible time windows across:

• The ASIC dashboard: Device-reported hashrate, available power readings, board and chip status, temperatures, fan speeds, and error logs.
• The pool dashboard: Estimated hashrate over its stated window, worker status, and rejected-share information.
• Operating records: Actual uptime, curtailment, outages, and repair history.

Check whether the device’s hashrate and power use match its operating mode. Then assess whether pool-estimated hashrate broadly tracks device-reported performance over a comparable multi-hour or daily period, allowing for statistical variation.

If rejected shares are elevated, inspect the reported reasons. Pool reporting conventions vary; stale, invalid, and duplicate shares should not automatically be treated as interchangeable problems or added together when they overlap within a rejection total.

Also check whether the problem affects one worker, a rack, or a shared network connection. Reduced credited earnings alone cannot tell you whether the cause is hardware, connectivity, downtime, or payout mechanics. Higher network difficulty reduces expected BTC earnings for unchanged contributed work; it does not itself reduce the ASIC’s physical hashrate.

Treat Difficulty and Price as Scenarios, Not Forecasts

Separate BTC-denominated earnings from USD revenue. Expected BTC earnings depend on contributed hashrate, uptime, network difficulty, the block subsidy, transaction fees, and pool rules. BTC price changes the dollar value of those earnings; it does not change BTC output by itself.

The subsidy is currently 3.125 BTC per block following the April 2024 halving. Historical earnings from before that halving require adjustment for the changed subsidy as well as subsequent difficulty and other operating changes (Bitcoin halving reference).

Use a small set of scenarios:

• Baseline: Current BTC price and difficulty, representative uptime, and a reasonable recent transaction-fee assumption.
• Downside: Lower BTC price and higher difficulty, with additional downtime if that is a relevant operating risk.
• Upside: More favorable conditions, treated as a possible outcome rather than an expectation.

Difficulty has an inverse relationship with expected BTC output when other inputs are unchanged. For example, with BTC price down 15% and difficulty up 10%, the simplified expected USD revenue factor is:

0.85 ÷ 1.10 ≈ 0.7727

That means approximately 22.7% less expected USD revenue, assuming unchanged hashrate, uptime, subsidy, transaction fees per block, and pool fee rates. This is a sensitivity calculation, not a prediction of a particular credited payout. Subtract the scenario’s operating costs afterward; a 22.7% revenue decline does not mean profit falls by only 22.7%.

Signals That May Warrant Pausing or Retiring an ASIC

No electricity price, J/TH rating, or hardware age provides a universal shutdown threshold. Review these signals together:

• Expected revenue persistently falls below avoidable operating costs.
• Hardware faults repeatedly reduce hashrate or increase energy use.
• Repairs and downtime consume too much of the unit’s expected future contribution.
• Changed power or hosting terms make continued operation uneconomic.
• Selling or redeploying the equipment offers a better expected outcome than continuing at the current site.

A temporary pause and permanent retirement are different decisions. A short-lived unfavorable period may justify curtailment, while recurring faults or a stronger sale alternative may support retirement. Account for restart costs and contractual terms where they materially affect the choice.

Practical Checklist

• Identify the decision: keep running, pause, repair, sell, or replace.
• Record the ASIC’s operating mode, device-reported hashrate, and actual power use.
• Check pool-estimated hashrate and earnings over compatible, representative periods.
• Confirm uptime, curtailment, and any rejected-share issues.
• Estimate daily BTC earnings after pool fees, then convert to USD using the scenario price.
• Include only costs that change between operating and shutting down over the chosen period.
• Check that electricity, cooling, hosting, and pool fees are each counted once.
• Run at least one downside scenario.
• For a sale decision, compare net sale proceeds with expected future operating cash flows and eventual resale value.
• For replacement, compare the new unit’s incremental benefit with the net replacement investment.

FAQ

Is a low J/TH rating enough to guarantee profitable Bitcoin mining?

No. Lower J/TH means less energy per unit of hashing work. Profitability also depends on electricity and hosting costs, BTC price, difficulty, uptime, and pool fees. Efficiency helps, but does not establish profitability by itself.

Why does my pool’s hashrate differ from my ASIC’s reading?

The ASIC reports hashrate through its firmware, while the pool estimates contributed work from shares over its own measurement window. Statistical variation, different averaging periods, connectivity problems, and rejected shares can create differences. Compare compatible periods before diagnosing a fault.

Should I use a public mining company’s cost per Bitcoin as my break-even price?

No. A company’s average reported cost reflects its own operations and accounting definitions. It does not tell you which costs disappear when your ASIC stops. Use your own expected earnings and avoidable costs for that decision.

Does PPS+ or PPLNS change how much I earn?

It can. Payment methods affect payout variance and settlement, and different fees affect expected net earnings. Compare the applicable fee schedule and calculation rules alongside your observed earnings; do not assume identical returns or guaranteed outperformance over a short period.

Should I stop mining if I have not recovered the ASIC’s purchase price?

An unrecovered purchase price does not by itself justify either continuing or stopping. For an immediate operating decision, compare expected revenue with avoidable costs. For keeping versus selling, also consider net sale proceeds and expected future cash flows.