Production cost
Bitcoin's cost of productioncost of productionAn estimate of the electricity cost to mine one bitcoin, from difficulty and rig efficiency. A soft, reflexive floor — not a hard one.See it on the site → — the electricity to mine one coin — as a band across fleet efficiency, with the BTC price weaving through it.
Electricity to mine one bitcoin runs about $63k — a $41k–$88k band across fleet efficiency, at $0.05/kWh. The 2026-10-18 close of $82,002 sits inside the mining cost band — efficient miners profit, older rigs are squeezed.
History
Our own arithmetic — network hashrate (mempool.space, 2026-10-19) at an assumed ~23 J/TH fleet efficiency, over protocol issuance, at $0.05/kWh. Electricity only (excludes hardware, cooling, overhead); a soft historical floor, not a guarantee. Not the Cambridge dataset. As of 2026-10-19, never live.
How it's computed
We compute the electricity cost to mine one bitcoin from our OWN bundled hashratehashrateThe total computing power securing the Bitcoin network, in hashes per second — a measure of how much work backs the chain.See it on the site → and the protocol issuance, at two disclosed public assumptions: fleet efficiency (a band from ~15 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. for the newest ASICs to ~32 for older gear, ~23 central) and $0.05/kWh electricity. Network power = hashrate × efficiency; energy per coin = daily energy ÷ coins issued; cost = energy per coin × electricity price. It is electricity-only (no hardware, cooling, or overhead), and it is NOT the Cambridge CBECI dataset (which is non-commercial-licensed) — just arithmetic over data we already ship. The chart pairs the cost band with the aligned BTC close, so you can see where price has dipped into or below the floor — the historical miner-stress zones.
Why there's no band
No cheap-or-expensive zone here. 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 →, hashrate, 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 → and production cost describe the state of the network, not whether bitcoin's price is high or low, so each shows a value and a date but no colour-coded range.