BTC: Bitcoin Production Cost (Electricity Model)
Bitcoin Production Cost (Electricity Model): daily data through 7 Nov 2026.
What it costs in electricity to mine one bitcoin across the network, modelled from our node's hash rate and the efficiency of the machines that pay to run, with the all-in production cost and an electric floor.
Why use it. Miners sell coins to pay for power. When the price falls toward the production cost the least efficient miners switch off and their selling eases, so the band has tended to support the price in bear markets; a price far above it shows how much of the price is margin over the cost of making new coins. How to read it. Compare the price with the lines. Above the production cost, mining pays its way; between the electricity cost and the production cost, miners cover their power but not their machines and overheads; near the electric floor only the most efficient miners on the cheapest power still earn more than they spend. The lines jump at each halving, when the coins mined per unit of electricity halve.
Calculation. Electricity cost per BTC = efficiency (J/TH) × PUE × 0.024 kWh × power price ÷ the BTC one TH/s earns in a day. Best guess: the profitable machines' average efficiency, PUE 1.10, $0.05/kWh. Production cost = the best guess ÷ 0.6, taking electricity as 60% of all mining costs (machines, buildings, staff and financing are the rest), a common industry rule of thumb. Electric floor: the most efficient machine available, PUE 1.10, $0.03/kWh. Each day uses the seven UTC days ending with it, to smooth block luck: hash rate is those blocks' work (difficulty × 2^32 each) over the window's seconds, and revenue per unit of hash rate is their claimed coinbase BTC (subsidy plus fees) over that work, at the day's BTC/USD close. A machine counts from the middle of the quarter its first units shipped, for four years (machines are written off over three to five years). It is profitable when its revenue covers its electricity at $0.05/kWh with a power usage effectiveness (PUE, the site's overhead for cooling and power conversion) of 1.10. The best guess is the plain average efficiency (J/TH) of the profitable machines, each model counted once; the lower bound puts all hash rate on the most efficient machine available, the upper bound on the least efficient profitable one; with no profitable machine all three use the most efficient. The model starts on 1 January 2014, when ASICs had replaced GPU and FPGA mining. It knows no real fleet: it assumes miners run machines that pay for their power and that every model is equally common, so cheap or free power, machines not yet installed, curtailment and each miner's real tariff move the true figure; the bounds show a reasonable range. It is an estimate, not a measurement. A model computed by CryptoKeyhole from its own Bitcoin node (each block's difficulty, claimed coinbase value, height and header time), the site's admitted BTC/USD daily closes, and a list of the main Bitcoin mining machines of Bitmain, MicroBT, Canaan, Bitdeer and Innosilicon from the first ASICs of 2013 to today, each with its manufacturer's nominal rating (TH/s and watts) and the quarter its first units shipped (the list: /api/v1/mining/hardware). Days are UTC days by block header time; the open day is partial. BTC/USD prices are the site's admitted boundary prices: daily closes from The Bitcoin Time Machine (CC BY 4.0) until 2 October 2026, then quotes recorded from Alternative.me at each boundary (within 15 minutes, never carried forward). Hourly values start on 3 October 2026, when hourly quotes begin.