In brief
- The Bitcoin mining profit/loss sustainability index hit a 14-month low, according to CryptoQuant.
- The metric measures the price of Bitcoin versus the profitability of running a Bitcoin mining operation.
- Shares of publicly traded BTC miners have fallen by double digits this week.
Bitcoin miners are struggling to eke out a profit lately amid the asset’s falling price and external complications, including a winter storm that rocked a large chunk of the United States last weekend, impacting the production of top mining firms.
A ratio that tracks the relationship between Bitcoin’s price and the profitability of running Bitcoin mining operations has hit a 14-month low, according to data from CryptoQuant.
“The miner profit/loss sustainability index is at 21, the lowest since November 2024,” the firm wrote in its latest mining report, released Thursday.
In other words, with Bitcoin’s price falling sharply this week and its current mining difficulty level, miners are “extremely underpaid,” according to CryptoQuant. And that’s despite the fact that the network’s hash rate, or the measurement of all the network’s computer power, has dropped in five consecutive epochs and is at its lowest mark since September 2025.
In addition to Bitcoin miners being “extremely underpaid” based on the aforementioned index, some were severely impacted by a recent major winter storm that blanketed the eastern United States, barraging multiple states in ice and snow.
The winter storm, which led to a further decrease in hash rate, also dropped daily mining revenues to a yearly low of $28 million, according to the data firm.
The production decrease coincided with a bleaker market for traditional equities and crypto assets, where shares in publicly traded miners like MARA Holdings, CleanSpark, and Riot Holdings all have fallen by double-digit percentages in the last five trading days.
Bitcoin has fared only slightly better, dropping 6% in the last seven days to change hands at $83,956—about 33% below its October all-time high of $126,080.
Earlier this week, data from the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index highlighted that it now costs more to mine BTC than to buy it on the open market.
The financial difficulties, and opportunities provided by demand for AI compute, have led some publicly traded miners like Bitfarms and Bit Digital to completely wind down their operations in search of more beneficial business models for shareholders.
A representative for CryptoQuant did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.