Is Bitcoin Mining Profitable? The Real ROI in Today’s Bitcoin Mining World (2025)

Is Bitcoin mining profitable? Can you make money mining bitcoin? Are you too late to the whole crypto mining profitability party? Well no. But. Home miners do need to have several factors in their favor to be profitable in today’s world. Let’s show you how!

Key Overview

• Bitcoin Mining can absolutely be profitable, but requires a unique set of circumstances
• You will need some money to purchase the Bitcoin Mining machines, preferably $500+
• You will need a supply of cheap electricity, preferably at <$0.10 USD / kWh
• You will need a place to store and keep cool the loud and hot mining equipment
• You will need some minor technical skills to set the miners up
• Regular monitoring and maintenance of the miners is also required

What Is Bitcoin Mining?

To begin with, let’s just quickly go over what Bitcoin Mining is exactly to make sure you know what it is you’re getting into and why. Mining is the process of adding transactions to the Bitcoin Blockchain.

Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining also performs two other critical functions in the Bitcoin network:

• Secures the network from attackers
• Issues / mints new bitcoins in a fair, automatic and distributed way

While many think the idea of having a digital currency was the “breakthrough”, it’s arguably more the PoW, mining and difficulty adjustment ideas that combined to be the true utter genius invention.

Before Bitcoin there were a slew of digital, cryptographic based currency attempts that all failed. It wasn’t until the mining process, PoW and the difficulty adjustment mechanism was fully fleshed out and laid bare by Satoshi that the digital cryptocurrency industry was truly born.

A final important note to know about bitcoin mining is that miners do not “validate bitcoin transactions”. That verification process is performed by Full Bitcoin Nodes.

>> Deeper Dive: What Is Bitcoin Mining?

What Is Hash Rate (Hashrate)?

Another vitally important metric to understand is hash rate. Hash rate (also hashrate) in the context of Bitcoin Mining is the speed at which a computer such as a CPU, GPU or ASIC Bitcoin miner can perform the hashing algorithm.

For example, if the mining pool can perform 10 trillion hashes per second, then its hash rate would equal 10 TH/s. The hash function used in Bitcoin is SHA256 and the faster your ASIC miner can hash, in general, the more revenue it will bring in.

You want to have the highest hash rate with the lowest energy use, as this will mean your revenue will be as high as it can be, while your expenses are as low as can be. The difficult part to this equation is that to get the most efficient miners costs the most money, which also increases your expenses.

>> Learn More: Hash Rate Calculator

What Is An ASIC Miner?

ASIC stands for Application-Specific Integrated Circuit and while that sounds all technical and complicated (which it very much is), all you essentially need to know is that an ASIC is a machine that has been purpose built, from the ground up to do exactly one thing, as incredibly efficiently as possible.

Another example of an ASIC is a GPU. These chips have been built to be the best graphical processing units possible and excel at processing polygons, which is core to rendering images for games. Similarly bitcoin mining ASIC’s are chips that have been designed to perform the Bitcoin SHA256 hashing algorithm with as little energy consumption as possible.

They don’t do anything else, just that. This means they can only ever be used to mine Bitcoin (and a few other altcoins). So when purchasing a Bitcoin mining ASIC, be fully aware that you cannot use it for most other crypto mining activities, unless that crypto also uses the same SHA256 algorithm.

What Are Bitcoin Mining Pools?

Finally mining pools are groups of miners that have all come together to “pool” their hashing power and thus, increase the likelihood that they will win the mining challenge more often. In return, if any one of the miners successfully solves a block, they agree to share the block reward with everyone else equal to how much hash power they contributed. Most mining pool services also charge a small fee.

While you don’t have to join a mining pool to mine bitcoin, the chances of an individual mining a block all on their own is astonishingly slim. Even with a top of the line ASIC miner running at 140 Th/s, it would take around 25+ years just to mine one block if you went on your own.

Mining Profitability

Now that we have the basics defined, let’s switch over to the financial side of things. Mining has grown into a multi hundred billion dollar industry. That being said, it can still absolutely be done with just 1 ASIC miner at home. How profitable you’ll be depends on what’s left over after you subtract all your expenses from all your revenue.

So let’s dive into all the different types of expenses, revenue sources and other factors that will effect your profitability when mining bitcoin.

Expenses

ASIC Miner Costs: This is the up front cost you pay to purchase your bitcoin mining machines. Which ASIC you purchase, how powerful it is, how old or new it is, how many you buy is entirely up to you and what amount of capital you have available to allocate or invest.

This is one of the two main costs, the other being electricity costs, and it’s typical for miners to cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars ($500) to $1,500 to as high as $3,000 each brand new depending on their hashing power. For some real world costs of brand new units you can check out Bitmain’s website.

Electricity Costs: While miners are the main CapEx cost, the main OpEx is energy costs. Being the main expense for mining (and an ongoing cost) the cheaper you can get power, the more profitable you’ll be. Huge mining facilities have been known to negotiate receiving virtually unlimited free renewable energy from nearby hydro dams. For the rest of us plebs though, you can see if your power company offers off peak or other special rates. Ideally you’ll want your power costs to be sub $0.10 USD per kWh.

Storage Costs: While miners don’t take up a lot of room per say, they do require a lot of power, meaning you can’t just dump them anywhere. They often require upwards of 3,000 Watts, which is typically a 15A at 240V plug. They also often get very hot and as such, produce an enormous amount of noise due to the fans that cool them.

If you’re in a colder part of the world then congratulations! You can use them to heat your house or just pump the hot air outside while drawing in freezing air from outside to help reduce noise and power use. Most people will store miners in their basement, attic or out in a shed or warehouse. The more you have, the louder and hotter things get, potentially increasing storage costs.

Mining Pool Costs: As they’re providing the service of coordinating many miners, a software back end and miner payouts there is usually a small fee for most pools. While this isn’t anything huge normally, some can charge outrageous prices that can make a big impact.

Unless you purchase enough hash rate to solo mine, which will normally cost hundreds of thousands to millions, you essentially always have to join a pool.

Maintenance Costs: While not a significant cost when you’re just cleaning the machines regularly, maintenance can sometimes be costly if your hardware breaks down and needs repairing or replacement. Even if it never breaks down, it can eventually become unprofitable to use as we’ll get to below in the hardware section.

Revenue

Block Rewards: There’s really only one source of revenue when it comes to mining bitcoin, which is of course the block rewards. Importantly the block reward is actually made up of two components, the block subsidy and the transactions fees.

The Block Subsidy is the minting of new bitcoin, currently at 3.125 bitcoin per block. The transaction fees are the sum of all fees in all the transactions contained in that specific block. Together they combine to equal the block reward.

Block Reward = Block Subsidy + Transaction Fees

For most people that mine, your revenue will be paid out by the mining pool at a rate equal to how much hash rate you’ve contributed to the pool. The more miners you have, the more hash rate you can contribute, meaning the higher a share in the spoils you receive. Simple and fair.

Profitability

Whether your specific circumstance result in your mining operation being profitable mostly depends on how cheaply you can purchase your mining hardware for and how much your electricity costs are.

If you have a large shed out the back, live somewhere that’s snowing 99% of the year and can get power at $0.05 / kWh all while picking up some efficient ASIC machines on the cheap, you’ll probably have a pretty good chance of being profitable!

Mining Difficulty Adjustments, Halvings & Hardware

Satoshi knew that technological advancements – especially computers! – are constantly getting better and better over time. Because of this, they had to design the mining challenge process to adapt and adjust to this ever growing capability of compute power.

The mining difficulty adjustment measures how difficult it is to find a new block compared to the easiest it can ever be. After every 2,016 blocks it’s automatically recalculated to make sure that the previous 2,016 blocks would have been mined in exactly two weeks (1 block every 10 minutes = 6 blocks x 24 hours x 14 days = 2,016).

This difficulty adjustment calculation ensures that, on average, the Bitcoin network will mine blocks at an average rate of one block every ten minutes no matter how many miners join or how much faster computers get.

As the mining of blocks also results in the distribution of new bitcoins via the block rewards, this simple but brilliant difficulty adjustment mechanism also ensures that the monetary policy that issues new coins remains stable even over the course of decades of technology advancement.

Its Effect On Miners

While the difficulty adjustment amount goes up or down every two weeks, in general it’s always gone up over time. This makes it more challenging for existing hardware which will earn less and less bitcoin as time goes on.

In order to remain profitable in the face of this ever decreasing revenue, mining power needs to go up either by being more efficient or simply having more miners. As the mining efficiency of an ASIC is typically set, you’ll eventually need to replace it after a few years if it’s no longer profitable to run.

Bitcoin Halving

The Bitcoin Halving (also called Bitcoin Halvening) is when the block subsidy that’s rewarded to Bitcoin miners is halved. Currently the block subsidy is 3.125 BTC, but in 2028 it will reduce to 1.5625 BTC once the Bitcoin Blockchain hits a block height of 1,050,000.

While this only happens every four years, it obviously has a huge effect on the profitability of those receiving mining rewards. That being said, over this long time period, you’ll also see the bitcoin price go up substantially too which helps to offset both the halving and the mining difficulty adjustment.

Overall it’s a tight balancing act, between energy costs, mining rewards, the bitcoin price, the mining difficulty factor and your other expenses as to how profitable you’ll be and for how long.

Other Mining Options

Mining Other Cryptocurrencies

If you’re not interested in buying a bitcoin specific ASIC miner, another option is to mine other cryptocurrencies and then sell the rewards you get from that for bitcoin. This can allow you to use other types of mining rigs or mining equipment such as CPU mining, GPU mining or even “mining” using hard drives.

For certain individual miners with specialized hardware at their disposal, it can mean a lower initial investment, lower operational costs or just be a more viable option. There are programs such as Nice Hash that allow you do cryptocurrency mining with any hardware and any coin and then get paid in Bitcoin. Do be cautious though as they now appear to require KYC, which is a shame.

Lottery Mining

Bitcoin lottery mining (also called desktop mining) is a way for everyday people to mine Bitcoin that involves solo miners competing to find a valid block in the Bitcoin network. A solo miner is someone that doesn’t join a mining pool and instead, aims to independently solve a block all on their own and claim the full block reward for themselves.

Bitcoin lottery mining is for those who wish to operate even lower power consumption miners. As these are usually less than about 1 TH/s in power, they’re not worth even joining these pooled mining efforts.

As a result, people solo mine with them, essentially gambling on the odds of hitting a block and being able to claim the full block reward like you would a jackpot in Powerball.

>> Deeper Dive: Bitcoin Lottery Mining

Cloud Mining

Cloud Mining is where users rent hash power from cloud mining providers in order to mine Bitcoin. Just like you might use a cloud service provider to rent storage space to store your files, cloud mining allows you to mine bitcoin without having to buy expensive mining hardware, power and maintain it as well set it up.

While this can sound like a win/win, the downsides are that it leads to lower profits, there is the high chance of fraud and you are often confined by contracts.

>> Learn More: Cloud Mining

Taxes On Bitcoin Mining & Legality

Just like with any other income generating activity, bitcoin mining is taxable in most countries. Depending on the country and how you’re setup, you may be eligible to deduct the costs of the mining hardware, pool fees, electricity and more as expenses.

As you receive the bitcoin income it’s important to keep accurate and complete records and to report it as such to your tax authority. You should always check with a certified tax account to ensure you’re following all required tax laws and maximizing your profits.

Bitcoin mining is also legal in most countries around the world, but unfortunately not all. Obviously this is an ongoing and quickly changing thing, so the below list may be out of date, but currently Bitcoin mining is illegal in:

• Afghanistan
• Algeria
• Bangladesh
• Bolivia
• China
• Egypt
• Kosovo
• Morocco
• Nepal

For more detailed and up to date information please see Wikipedia.

FAQ