BITCOIN MINING 101
Learn about one of the most helpful metrics to calculate mining profitability
Published in · 3 min read · Mar 9, 2023
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Hashprice is a Bitcoin mining metric that represents the miner revenue on a per terahash basis.
In other words, it is the average value — in fiat currency — of the daily rewards a miner gets per each terahash calculation (USD/TH/s per day). Those rewards include both transaction fees and new bitcoin entering circulation.
As a result, hashprice responds to two critical factors:
- Bitcoin’s price.
- Total Bitcoin hashrate, which determines the mining difficulty.
Many people see hashprice as the market value of a given unit of hashrate, but this metric can also provide insights about the mining ecosystem.
For example, you can estimate the profitability of a specific mining computer by multiplying its hashrate output by hashprice. Miners can also use hashprice to analyze the variations in mining revenue and strategize accordingly.
As we mentioned, hashprice is the result of the dynamic between the market price of bitcoin and the total amount of hashrate working on the network.
How exactly does this dynamic work? To answer this question, we first need to contemplate a few considerations:
- Miners earn in bitcoin, but pay their costs and expenses in fiat. Thus, bitcoin price is important to calculate profitability, even if miners don’t intend to sell.
- Bitcoin difficulty automatically adjusts every 2,016 blocks proportionally to the network’s total hashrate. The more hashrate on the network, the harder it is to mine.
- Higher difficulty impacts profitability, as miners have to spend more computational resources — and electricity — to find a block and earn the rewards.
Essentially, hashprice responds to these two different factors — price action and hashrate/difficulty — in two different ways:
- Hashprice is positively correlated with changes to bitcoin’s price and transaction fee volume. The higher the price of bitcoin and/or the transaction volume, the higher the dollar-valued rewards per TH/s.
- Contrarily, hashprice has a negative correlation with hashrate/mining difficulty adjustments. When difficulty rises, the value of hashrate decreases, as it earns fewer rewards due to increase in competition. On the other hand, when difficulty drops, hashrate becomes more valuable, as the same amount of hashrate can potentially earn more rewards.
However, it’s the relationship between these two factors that ultimately determines hashprice.
Hashprice represents the dollar value of the daily mining rewards per TH/s. It can be expressed as USD/TH/s per day.
The metric is a valuable tool for miners to acquire insights on the current mining landscape, strategize when to hedge and plan for possible scenarios, and calculate profitability or estimate their mining revenue.
Nevertheless, hashprice can be as volatile as bitcoin itself, as it derives from the ratio between bitcoin’s market price and the network’s total hashrate, which determines mining difficulty.
The relationship between these two factors has a direct impact on mining profitability, and thus, on hashprice.
