Analysis: The cost of Bitcoin mining has reached $88,000, with miners losing about $19,000 per BTC

According to CoinDesk, Bitcoin miners are currently facing severe cost pressures. Checkonchain's difficulty regression model shows that the average production cost of Bitcoin is about $88,000, while the current price of Bitcoin is around $69,200, a difference of nearly $19,000, meaning that the average miner incurs a loss of about 21% for each Bitcoin mined.

Cost pressures have been accumulating since last October when Bitcoin fell from $126,000 to below $70,000, and the Iran war has further exacerbated the situation. The oil price surpassing $100 per barrel has directly increased miners' electricity costs, especially impacting markets that rely on Middle Eastern energy supplies, which account for about 8% to 10% of global hash power. Trump issued a 48-hour ultimatum on Saturday, threatening to attack Iranian power plants, adding new layers of risk for miners.

Bitcoin mining difficulty decreased by 7.76% to 133.79 T on Saturday, marking the second-largest drop in 2026, currently about 10% lower than at the beginning of the year and far below the historical high of about 155 T in November 2025. The total network hash rate has retreated to about 920 EH/s, with the average block time extending to 12 minutes and 36 seconds in the previous cycle. The hash rate price is currently about $33.3 per PH/s/day, close to the breakeven point for most mining machines, and not far from the historical low of $28 set on February 23.

When miners cannot cover their costs, they will be forced to sell Bitcoin to maintain operations, which further increases market selling pressure in the context of 43% of Bitcoin supply being in a loss state. Public mining companies like Marathon Digital and Cipher Mining are responding to the crisis by diversifying into AI and high-performance computing. The next difficulty adjustment is expected in early April, with CoinWarz data predicting a continued decline.