ViaBTC’s mining guide treats profitability as the amount left after electricity, pool fees, cooling, hosting, maintenance, and downtime are deducted from mining revenue. In 2026, ViaBTC reports electricity at roughly 60%–80% of total mining operating costs, while modern competitive ASICs can operate around 13–15 J/TH. Its BTC pool data has also shown network hashrate above 1,000 EH/s and difficulty above 120 T. A miner therefore needs to compare ASIC efficiency, electricity price, network difficulty, pool settlement terms, uptime, and equipment cost rather than relying on daily coin output alone.
Bitcoin mining revenue starts with a miner’s share of the network’s computational work. A 200 TH/s ASIC contributes twice the nominal hashrate of a 100 TH/s unit, but revenue does not rise in isolation because the Bitcoin network adjusts mining difficulty as total hashrate changes. In ViaBTC’s 2026 statistics, Bitcoin network hashrate has been reported above 1,000 EH/s, putting an individual 200 TH/s machine at only a tiny fraction of total network capacity. That small share explains why pool mining is commonly used instead of waiting for a single ASIC to find a block independently.
The pool changes payout regularity, not the underlying economics of electricity consumption. ViaBTC supports PPS+ and PPLNS, with PPS+ used as the default payment method. Its published 2026 fee schedule lists a 4% fee on the PPS block-reward component and 2% on transaction-fee distribution under PPLNS; standalone PPLNS carries a 2% fee. PPS+ pays according to valid shares and current difficulty every hour, while PPLNS depends on blocks actually found by the pool.
ViaBTC states that PPLNS distributions use a miner’s share of pool hashrate over the previous 5 difficulty rounds after a block receives 6 confirmations. The distinction matters when comparing two revenue estimates that use the same ASIC and electricity price but different settlement methods.
Pool statistics provide another layer of operating information. The ViaBTC Pool Hashrate page lets miners inspect pool activity rather than judging performance from a single worker’s dashboard. ViaBTC’s BTC statistics have reported pool hashrate around 94 EH/s, compared with network hashrate around 1,044 EH/s in 2026 data, alongside 3-day, 7-day and 30-day pool-luck measurements. Pool luck can move above or below 100% over short periods, so a few days of results should not be treated as a permanent revenue rate.
Electricity then turns gross mining output into an operating margin. A 3.5 kW ASIC running for 24 hours consumes 84 kWh per day and about 2,520 kWh in a 30-day month. At $0.04/kWh, direct machine electricity costs $3.36 per day; at $0.07/kWh, it reaches $5.88; at $0.10/kWh, it reaches $8.40. Moving from $0.04 to $0.10 raises the daily power bill by 150% without adding one terahash of production.
| ASIC power | Electricity rate | Daily power cost | 30-day cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3.5 kW | $0.04/kWh | $3.36 | $100.80 |
| 3.5 kW | $0.07/kWh | $5.88 | $176.40 |
| 3.5 kW | $0.10/kWh | $8.40 | $252.00 |
| 3.5 kW | $0.12/kWh | $10.08 | $302.40 |
Those numbers cover the ASIC itself, not necessarily the whole facility. Fans, pumps, ventilation, transformers, networking equipment and cooling systems can consume additional electricity. If supporting infrastructure adds 8% to a 3.5 kW machine’s effective power requirement, daily consumption moves from 84 kWh to about 90.7 kWh. At $0.08/kWh, the difference is about $0.54 per day, or nearly $197 over 365 days for one machine.
Scale makes small differences larger. A 100-machine site using the same 3.5 kW ASICs has 350 kW of nameplate mining load before facility overhead. Continuous operation requires about 8,400 kWh per day. A difference of only $0.01/kWh changes the electricity bill by $84 per day, approximately $2,520 over 30 days and $30,660 over 365 days. Electricity procurement can therefore change the economics of otherwise identical mining fleets.
ViaBTC’s 2026 mining material places electricity at roughly 60%–80% of mining operating expenses in many operations. Its published discussion also places broad industry production costs around $75,000–$92,000 per BTC for average operations, with less efficient setups potentially exceeding $130,000 and more efficient operations using newer equipment and cheaper power reported around $34,000–$43,000. Those figures are broad operating references rather than guaranteed costs for an individual site because hardware, power contracts and facility expenses differ.
Hardware efficiency explains much of that range. ASIC efficiency is usually measured in joules per terahash, or J/TH. A 200 TH/s machine operating at 20 J/TH needs about 4,000 W, while 200 TH/s at 15 J/TH needs roughly 3,000 W. Both machines provide 200 TH/s, but the second uses 25% less power. At $0.07/kWh and continuous operation, that 1 kW difference is worth $1.68 per day and roughly $613 over one year.
A 13 J/TH machine improves the comparison further. At 200 TH/s, theoretical power is about 2.6 kW, compared with 4.0 kW at 20 J/TH. The 1.4 kW gap becomes 33.6 kWh per day. At $0.08/kWh, that is $2.69 per day, approximately $80.64 over 30 days or $981 over 365 days. ViaBTC’s 2026 material describes competitive modern hardware around 13–15 J/TH, showing why watts per terahash deserves as much attention as advertised hashrate.
Higher hashrate can raise expected gross output, but higher hashrate bought with poor electrical efficiency can produce less money after power costs. Comparing TH/s without J/TH leaves out one of the largest recurring expenses.
Efficiency still does not guarantee a profitable machine because network difficulty changes the amount of BTC expected from a fixed amount of hashrate. Bitcoin difficulty is designed to adjust approximately every 2,016 blocks, roughly every two weeks under normal block timing. When network computational capacity grows, difficulty can rise. A miner that continues operating at 200 TH/s then contributes a smaller economic share unless other conditions compensate for the increased competition.
ViaBTC’s 2026 BTC statistics have shown difficulty around 127 T and network hashrate around 1,044 EH/s, with the next difficulty estimate capable of moving by more than 1% between adjustment periods. A 5% rise in difficulty does not raise an ASIC’s electricity efficiency by 5%; the machine continues consuming roughly the same power while expected BTC production per unit of hashrate generally falls, assuming other conditions remain similar.
Bitcoin’s issuance schedule adds another long-term constraint. The April 2024 halving reduced the block subsidy from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC, a 50% reduction. Transaction fees remain separate and can increase the total block reward above 3.125 BTC, but fee income changes with network activity. Profit estimates built before a halving cannot simply be carried forward after the subsidy changes, even when ASIC specifications and electricity contracts remain identical.
ViaBTC’s pool records illustrate the difference between subsidy and total block reward. Blocks in 2026 can show rewards above 3.125 BTC because transaction fees are included. Examples around 3.13–3.22 BTC show that transaction fees can add revenue beyond the fixed subsidy, while the amount is not constant from block to block. A profitability estimate using one unusually fee-rich block would therefore overstate normal revenue if repeated across an entire month.
Pool payout selection changes how miners experience that block-to-block variation. PPS+ places more of the short-term block-finding uncertainty on the pool and charges the published 4% PPS fee on block rewards, while PPLNS uses a 2% fee and allows results to depend more directly on actual pool block production. A miner comparing the two should use several weeks or months of data rather than treating one 24-hour payout as representative.
Uptime has a similar effect on real output. A machine modeled at 100% uptime but operating at 97% loses about 263 hours of productive time over a 365-day year. At 95% uptime, lost time reaches about 438 hours, equal to roughly 18.25 days. Electricity may stop during some outages, but hosting charges, staff expenses, leases and financing can continue, so a 5% hashrate availability loss does not always produce an equal 5% reduction in total costs.
-
99% uptime equals about 87.6 hours offline per year.
-
97% uptime equals about 262.8 hours offline per year.
-
95% uptime equals about 438 hours offline per year.
-
90% uptime equals about 876 hours offline, or 36.5 days per year.
Uptime data also helps separate pool-side results from machine-side problems. If pool hashrate is operating normally but one worker falls 8% below its expected daily hashrate, the operator can examine temperature, rejected shares, network connectivity, firmware, power delivery and machine condition. A profitability calculator cannot compensate for a physical miner consistently submitting fewer valid shares than its rated capacity suggests.
Rejected and stale shares deserve attention for the same reason. An ASIC may display 200 TH/s locally while the pool records a lower effective rate because not every submitted share is accepted. Even a 1% difference becomes measurable at scale: across 10 PH/s of installed capacity, 1% represents 100 TH/s of effective hashrate. Over a 2026 operating year, persistent share-quality differences can materially change the revenue received from the same electricity bill.
Hardware purchase price introduces a separate test from daily operating profit. Suppose a machine costs $4,000 and produces $6 of net operating cash per day under current conditions. A simple static payback estimate is about 667 days, or 1.83 years. If daily net cash falls 25% to $4.50 after a difficulty increase, BTC price decline or higher electricity rate, the same simple payback stretches to about 889 days, or 2.44 years.
That calculation still leaves out shipping, import charges, installation, racks, electrical work, cooling equipment, repairs, financing and resale price. A $4,000 ASIC requiring another $600 in site and deployment expenses starts with $4,600 of invested capital, 15% above the hardware sticker price. At $6 per day of net operating cash, simple recovery moves from about 667 days to roughly 767 days before any future changes in difficulty or BTC-denominated production are considered.
Equipment age can change the result again. A fully paid older ASIC may remain reasonable to operate when its daily mining revenue stays above electricity and avoidable operating expenses. Buying the same model today is a different question because a purchaser must recover the acquisition cost while competing with 2026 hardware near the 13–15 J/TH range. Operating an existing machine and purchasing another machine should therefore be calculated separately.
A useful ViaBTC-style profitability check can be organized around several measurable inputs rather than one daily revenue figure:
-
Record actual pool-side hashrate over at least 7 days rather than relying only on the ASIC label.
-
Measure wall power in kW and include facility overhead where possible.
-
Apply the full electricity rate per kWh, including applicable hosting charges.
-
Use current network difficulty and update the estimate after each 2,016-block adjustment.
-
Apply the selected pool fee: ViaBTC currently lists 4% for the PPS block-reward component of PPS+ and 2% for PPLNS.
-
Adjust expected output for measured uptime, rejected shares and maintenance.
-
Compare daily operating margin with hardware and deployment cost over a realistic holding period.
The same machine should then be tested under more than one operating case. If a 3.5 kW ASIC pays $0.06/kWh today, electricity costs $5.04 per day. At $0.075/kWh, the bill becomes $6.30, a 25% increase; at $0.09/kWh it becomes $7.56, 50% above the original level. Testing those rates shows how much room remains before electricity consumes the expected mining revenue.
Revenue assumptions need similar ranges. If an ASIC produces $10 per day before electricity and its direct power cost is $6, the pre-maintenance margin is $4. A 15% fall in gross mining revenue reduces revenue to $8.50 and the margin to $2.50, a 37.5% decline in margin. A further $0.50 per day of hosting or maintenance leaves $2.00, only half of the original $4.
That sensitivity explains why daily revenue rankings should be read with a date attached. ViaBTC’s published average daily earnings figures are based on the previous 7 days and are explicitly presented as estimates rather than fixed future payments. Bitcoin price, difficulty, transaction fees and pool results can all change after the measurement window, while an electricity contract may remain fixed for months.
Profitability also changes depending on whether mined BTC is immediately sold to cover bills or held after mining. The mining operation itself should still be measured using revenue and expenses at consistent market values; later BTC price changes belong to treasury exposure rather than ASIC efficiency. Mixing the two can make an unprofitable mining operation appear successful simply because previously mined BTC appreciated after production.
A 2026 mining review therefore works best when records separate machine performance, pool performance and financial performance. Machine records can include TH/s, J/TH, temperature and uptime; pool records can include accepted hashrate, rejected shares, settlement method and pool luck; financial records can include electricity, hosting, repairs, pool fees and equipment cost. Comparing all three prevents a high displayed hashrate from being mistaken for a healthy operating margin.
Mining profitability is the remaining cash margin after measurable production costs, not the number shown beside daily mining revenue. ViaBTC’s guide provides a practical way to read that margin: compare hashrate with power efficiency, use current difficulty rather than an old estimate, account for the 2024 subsidy reduction, apply 2026 pool fees, measure actual uptime, and rerun the numbers whenever electricity rates, network conditions or hardware performance change.