The Bitcoin (BTC) mining hashprice — representing a miner’s daily earnings for each unit of hashing power used to mine blocks — has remained stable at approximately $48 per petahash per second (PH/s), even with a slight 1.4% increase in Bitcoin mining difficulty.
According to data from CoinWarz, the Bitcoin difficulty rose to 113.76 trillion at block 889,081 on March 23, up from the previous epoch’s difficulty of 112.1 trillion.
TheMinerMag reports that a hashprice under $50 puts financial strain on miners operating older hardware, like the Antminer S19 XP and S19 Pro.
Older equipment combined with falling network transaction fees could drive some miners into unprofitable situations—forcing them to halt their operations until they can upgrade their application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) or until circumstances within the network improve.
Mining companies have faced challenges since the Bitcoin halving event in April 2024, which reduced the block subsidy to 3.125 BTC per mined block, generally raising network difficulty, alongside a recent downturn in cryptocurrency markets due to macroeconomic uncertainties.
Bitcoin mining difficulty. Source: CoinWarz
Related: SEC states that proof-of-work mining is not classified as securities dealing
Miners Encounter Difficulties at the Start of 2025
A study by financial services firm JPMorgan reveals that publicly traded Bitcoin mining companies collectively experienced a 22% decline in their share value during February 2025.
Even those miners who have diversified their operations into artificial intelligence and high-performance computing data centers to compensate for losses in mining revenue are under financial stress, as indicated in the JPMorgan report.
The financial services firm noted the launch of DeepSeek R1, an open-source AI model developed at a fraction of the cost of leading models, which operates comparably to proprietary AI products, has put pressure on large AI data centers.
While the Bitcoin network’s hashrate fluctuates in the short term, the long-term trend is consistently upward. Source: CryptoQuant
A progressively increasing network hashrate, representing the total computing power in the Bitcoin network, is also intensifying competition among miners, who must invest more computing resources to maintain their profitability.
Concerns over a prolonged trade conflict between the United States and Canada, coupled with ongoing tariff discussions, have left miners anxious.
Threats from Canadian officials to impose tariffs on energy exports to the United States add further pressure to an already struggling industry.
Magazine: Korea to lift corporate crypto ban, beware crypto mining HDs: Asia Express
