Dispatches · Monitor briefs · A BTChub original
Monitor brief: Week 38, Sep 14–Sep 20, 2026
Bitcoin rose 5.7% to $81,164; a typical modern miner could pay up to 8.3¢ per kWh for power ($83/MWhMWhMegawatt-hour, 1,000 kWh: the unit wholesale power is priced in. $76 per MWh is 7.6¢ per kWh, the unit on a household bill.), and wholesale power at ERCOTERCOTThe Electric Reliability Council of Texas: the operator of most of Texas's power grid and its wholesale electricity market, home to many US Bitcoin miners. Houston hub averaged 3.9¢ ($39/MWh).
In plain words: a typical modern miner could pay up to 8.3¢ per kWh for power that week and still cover it. Wholesale power at the ERCOT Houston hub averaged 3.9¢ per kWh, so running paid on 7 of 7 days (by daily average).
- Bitcoin close$81,164up 5.7% on the week
- HashpricehashpriceWhat a miner earns per unit of hashpower per day — revenue divided by hashrate. It falls as competition rises or price drops.See it on the site →$40.03/PH/daywhat 1 PH/sPH/sPetahashes per second: a quadrillion guesses a second, the unit for a fleet of mining machines. One current machine does about 0.2 PH/s (200 TH/s). of machines earned a day from new coins, at the Sep 20 close
- Breakevenbreakeven power priceThe most a miner can pay for electricity and still cover it from what its machines earn. Below it, running pays; above it, switching off saves money. Electricity only.See it on the site → power$83/MWh= 8.3¢ per kWh: the most a 20 J/THJ/THJoules per terahash: how much electricity a mining machine burns for each unit of work. Lower is more efficient. New machines are around 15–20; older ones 30 or more. machine could pay for power
- DifficultydifficultyA protocol setting that adjusts every ~2 weeks to keep blocks arriving about every 10 minutes, rising and falling with hashrate.See it on the site →+0.00%mining got harder, so each machine earns less (vs the prior weekly sample, 2026-09-16)
power vs breakeven
| Grid hub | Average power | Days running paid | Left after power, per PH/s a day |
|---|---|---|---|
| ERCOT Houston hub | 3.9¢/kWh ($39/MWh) | 7 of 7 | $21.24 |
| ERCOT North hub | 5.1¢/kWh ($51/MWh) | 6 of 7 | $15.75 |
| ERCOT West hub | 3.4¢/kWh ($34/MWh) | 7 of 7 | $23.59 |
| ERCOT South hub | 3.8¢/kWh ($38/MWh) | 7 of 7 | $21.98 |
| MISO Indiana hub | 8.0¢/kWh ($80/MWh) | 4 of 7 | $1.76 |
| NYISO New York City zone | 5.1¢/kWh ($51/MWh) | 7 of 7 | $15.33 |
ERCOT North hub (1 day), MISO Indiana hub (3 days) had daily averages above breakeven; a miner paying the spot price there would have curtailed some of those hours. Averages are of daily means of 5-minute real-time prices (LMPLMPLocational marginal price: the wholesale price of power at one point on the grid, set every few minutes by the costliest plant needed to meet demand there.); hubs with under 5 days of data are left out. Hub prices are not a tariff.
sources
- Bitcoin daily closes — Kraken (via BTChub's public/btc-history.json)
- Difficulty, weekly samples — mempool.space, https://mempool.space/api/v1/mining/hashrate/3y
- Daily average real-time LMP — Dryos public API (ISO real-time LMP), https://api.dryos.ai/v1/datasets, snapshot 2026-10-16
Generated from data committed to the site; the numbers on this page do not change after publication. Method: methodology.