The power consumption efficiency of an ASIC determines how much power it uses to do its job.
The market price of bitcoin is the main measurement of its production cost.
The production cost of one bitcoin (BTC) would have been reduced from approximately $80,000 to $59,000 per BTC, according to Trading Different, an analysis platform. on-chain and crypto asset mining.
The signature Capriole maintains that the cost of production of bitcoin is still above $80,000. In any case, the decrease in this measurement, according to Iván Paz, founder of Trading Different, would be related to the incorporation of ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) equipment. more efficient in their electrical consumption in Bitcoin mining.
In this sense, the manager pointed out as an example two of the last Bitmain models, the S21+ Hyd (available on the market from February 2025) and the Bitmain S21e XP Hyd (November 2024).
By corroborating the statistics of these ASICs on the ASIC Miner Value site, you can verify their best efficiency, measured in 15 J/TH (Joules per terahashes) and 13 J/TH respectively, relative to most other ASICs for mining bitcoin.
However, there is a model from Bitmain’s S21 line with higher efficiency. It is about the Antminer S21 XP Hydof 12 J/TH. Ultimately, these three outstanding mining equipment provide a reduction in the production cost of each BTC, since they make more efficient use of energy to execute their tasks than other ASICs.
The energy efficiency of an ASIC for mining Bitcoin is a concept that refers to the amount of energy the device consumes to perform a certain volume of work, measured in hashrate.
Specifically, the efficiency of a BTC mining rig is measured in joules per terahash (J/TH), where a joule is a unit of energy and a terahash represents one trillion calculations per second. These calculations attempt to solve the cryptographic problem that validates a block with transactions on the Bitcoin network, which involves finding a hash that meets the conditions established by the difficulty of the network.
A more efficient ASIC has a lower value in J/THindicating that it consumes less energy to produce the same amount of computing power.
However, as CriptoNoticias already explained, mining profitability does not depend only on energy efficiency. The cost of the ASIC (the most efficient ones are usually more expensive), the price of BTC, the difficulty of the Bitcoin network, and the electricity costs in the specific location, among others, also play a role.
What is Bitcoin production cost and what does it entail?
The cost of production of Bitcoin is an indicator that reflects the average expenses necessary to mine a bitcoin. This calculation includes operating costs, such as electricity and maintenance. Also non-operating costs, such as equipment amortization, administrative expenses and infrastructure.
The profitability of mining depends on the market price of bitcoin exceeding the cost of production. If the value of a BTC falls below this cost, miners can, for example, sell your Bitcoin reserves at a loss to cover expenses. If the value of bitcoin exceeds the cost of production, miners could still sell some of their mined BTC, but retain a positive margin on the balance.
The decrease in this cost, driven in part by the adoption of more efficient ASICs, could improve miners’ profit margins, if the aforementioned factors come together.
Hashrate remains at high levels
The CEO and founder of Trading Different discarded that the decrease in the production cost of a bitcoin is linked to a loss of power in the global hashrate of the Bitcoin network.
Contrasting this information with mempoolit is observed that for January 14 (the last data recorded on this site) the Bitcoin hashrate was 847 EH/s. This can be seen in the following image.
While high hashrate levels increase the security of the Bitcoin network, with more miners and more hashing power, the mining difficulty is automatically adjusted (every 2,016 blocks, approximately every two weeks) to keep the average block generation time close. of 10 minutes.
In this context, greater energy efficiency in ASICs could act as a catalyst to improve Bitcoin mining profitability, since it allows miners to reduce operating costs and maximize the use of their resources, although it cannot be ignored that their initial investment It would also be higher. The latter could delay the time needed to recover the investment (ROI).
Indeed, the full impact of ASIC efficiency will also depend on other fundamental factors, such as the price of Bitcoin, which remains the central element in determining the economic sustainability of mining operations.