Mining
Calculating mining returns
Mining is a margin business. Four variables — revenue per terahash, efficiency, power price and depreciation — tell you in five minutes whether a setup stands a chance.
Hashprice: what one terahash earns per day
Hashprice expresses daily revenue per TH/s at the current price, difficulty and fee level. It trends down as global hashrate grows faster than rewards.
Never extrapolate today's hashprice across a machine's lifetime; model a conservative annual decline.
Efficiency and power cost
Efficiency is measured in joules per terahash. A 20 J/TH machine at 100 TH/s draws roughly 2,000 watts.
Daily kWh = watts × 24 / 1,000. Multiply by your all-in power price including grid fees and levies.
- Revenue/day = TH/s × hashprice
- Cost/day = kW × 24 × price per kWh
- Margin/day = revenue − cost − pool fee
Worked example
100 TH/s, 3,000 watts, €0.12/kWh and a hashprice of €0.05 per TH/day: revenue €5.00, power 72 kWh × €0.12 = €8.64. This setup loses money.
At €0.04/kWh power costs €2.88 and about €2.00 margin remains before pool fee, depreciation and maintenance.
What most models forget
Depreciation is the biggest hidden cost: hardware loses value the moment more efficient models ship. Use three to four years straight-line.
Add downtime, ventilation, spare parts, space and tax treatment — and model a price drop without a matching difficulty drop.
Vanliga frågor
What is a realistic payback period?
Twelve to twenty-four months in favourable conditions. Above €0.10/kWh, new hardware rarely pays back.
Where do I find hashprice?
Public mining dashboards publish it daily. Use a thirty-day average rather than today's peak.
Does heat count as revenue?
Yes, if it genuinely displaces gas or electricity you would have used anyway.
Läs vidare
What is crypto mining?
Mining explained without jargon: why networks need computation, what a miner does and where the reward comes from.
Mine at home or host it?
A practical comparison between a miner at home and hosting in a data centre: costs, risks, noise and contract terms.
Halving and mining economics
Every four years the block reward halves. What it does to margins, hashrate, hardware cycles and the role of fees.