Bitcoin mining companies are turning to renewable energy to cut costs as hash prices, a key indicator of miner profitability, are at record lows, below the $40 break-even point for miners.
According to mining data provider Hashrate Index, the hash price, which measures a miner's expected profitability per unit of computing power used to successfully add a block, is approximately $39.4 per petahash per second per day (PH/s/day) at the time of this writing.
Sangha Renewables, a Bitcoin (BTC) miner and renewable energy company, on Thursday powered a 20 megawatt (MW) solar-powered mining facility in Ector County, Texas, according to TheMinerMag.
Miner hash prices continue to fall. sauce: hash rate index
Mining and digital infrastructure company Phoenix Group announced in November that it had started a 30-megawatt hydroelectric mining operation in Ethiopia.
In September, hardware manufacturer and Bitcoin miner Canaan partnered with digital infrastructure company Soluna to install a mining facility at a wind farm in Brisco County, Texas.
Canaan is also developing adaptive mining rigs to maximize energy efficiency. The hardware balances electrical loads and uses AI to adjust energy usage.
The Bitcoin mining industry is facing several economic challenges, including declining mining rewards, leaving industry players in the toughest margin environment in the sector's history.
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Mining BTC becomes increasingly expensive
The Bitcoin network's mining hash rate, which represents the total amount of computing power securing the protocol, continues to reach new all-time highs.
Although hashrate fluctuates in the short term, the long-term trend is upward, with the network hashrate passing the 1 zetahash milestone in April.
1 Zetahash is equivalent to 1,000 Petahash. Increasing hashrate means that miners need to spend more computing resources than ever before to stay competitive and successfully mine blocks.
In November, stablecoin issuer Tether announced it would shut down its Bitcoin mining operations in Uruguay, citing rising energy costs.
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