In brief
- The falling price of Bitcoin is at risk of making Bitcoin mining unprofitable in the United States, depending on energy rates.
- Other countries also face a situation where the cost of mining one Bitcoin is more than that Bitcoin is worth, although some major Bitcoin mining territories—including Paraguay—continue to benefit from relatively cheap energy.
- Experts say that, without substantial price increases, the next Bitcoin halving could put significant strain on miners.
Bitcoin now costs more to mine in the United States than its current market price, according to data from the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI).
The cryptocurrency is currently trading at around $87,900 according to CoinGecko data, while data from the CBEIC and the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)—which puts the average nationwide cost per kWh of energy in October 2025 at $0.14—suggest that the current cost of mining one Bitcoin is $94,746.
This average price incorporates more expensive residential and commercial prices, but when taking only average industrial prices for all states ($0.09 in October), the average cost of mining one Bitcoin is still $86,931.
Given ongoing geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty, Bitcoin could be at risk of falling below this level, potentially putting greater strain on miners based in the U.S.
The situation is comparable or even worse in other countries, with China’s average business energy rate hitting $0.11 per kWh in June 2025, meaning that it costs $88,869 on average to mine a single Bitcoin.
GlobalPetrolPrices.com gives the same rate of $0.11 per kWh for Russia, while Canada benefits from a slightly lower rate of $0.10, equalling a cost of mining one Bitcoin of $88,003.
As an example of one country where large-scale mining is not commercially viable, trade body Cryptocurrency NZ has calculated that the cost to mine a single BTC in New Zealand is now NZ$173,192.96, or $103,799.
On the other hand, Paraguay—which now accounts for around 4% of Bitcoin’s hashrate—has an average mining cost of approximately $59,650, given its average electricity price for businesses of $0.05.
US miners pivot to AI
Mining operations are well aware of how difficult the current situation can be, with nine American mining companies—Riot Platforms, Bitfarms, Core Scientific, Riot, IREN, TeraWulf, CleanSpark, Bit Digital, MARA Holdings and Cipher Mining—having pivoted either wholly or in part to becoming AI data centers in the past year and a half.
Speaking to Decrypt, Canaan’s VP of Capital Markets and Corporate Development, Leo Wang, said that miners who have taken on too much debt to operate, or who have deployed overpriced or “quickly obsolete” hardware, have faced the prospect of unprofitability in recent years and months.
However, he affirmed that Canaan has taken strategic decisions to reduce its risk profile, including an avoidance of excessive debt, as well as the design and sale of its own mining hardware, so as to generate cash flow and offset expenses.
He said, “We try to keep our power price below 4 cents/kWh, which has historically been sustainable through bear markets, maintain daily operational oversight with partners, and deploy machines only when power and operations are fully ready.”
Canaan also maintains hosting agreements that give it the right to reduce or close operations in particular locations, assuming that the economics no longer work.
“From lower-cost markets to off-grid energy operations in Canada, our global footprint and technical capabilities also allow us to explore new energy sources and energy reuse, which reduces our reliance on any single grid or power source over time,” he added.
More generally, Digiconomist founder Alex de Vries notes that, while computational difficulty has peaked recently, the declining price of Bitcoin is making things increasingly difficult for miners.
“You can do the math yourself considering it takes about 1.2 million kWh to mine one Bitcoin at the moment,” he told Decrypt. “At a price of $85k per coin, anything above just 7 cents per kWh in costs will put you at a loss.”
De Vries concluded that Bitcoin mining being unprofitable will “actually be very common in most places,” since very low rates are not easy to secure. (these ultra low rates are not easy to get).
With another reward halving coming in two years, Bitcoin miners will need the cryptocurrency’s price to begin rising again soon.
“That’s still quite some time,” De Vries said, “but without substantial increases in the price level by then the miners would get squeezed even further.”
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