Mining in a bear market: count your output in bitcoin

What a low hashprice means

Hashprice is what one unit of hashrate earns a day. Hashrate Index gives it in dollars per petahash (PH) per day. On 6 June 2026 it reached an all-time daily low of $27.74 per PH per day. The June average was $30.37. By September the average was back to $39.33. For comparison, the low of the last bear market, in November 2022, was about $55.9.

A 200 TH/s machine is 0.2 PH, so at the June low it earned about $5.55 a day before pool fees. The power bill does not shrink when hashprice does. As dollar income falls, the gap between income and power gets thin, and on older machines it can close.

Fees are not filling the gap. For about 15 months they have been under 1% of block rewards (Luxor). Almost all income is the block subsidy, and that halves around April 2028: see what the 2028 halving means for a miner.

Count output in bitcoin first, dollars second

A miner does not produce dollars. It produces bitcoin. The dollar figure is that bitcoin times the price on the day you look, and in a bear market the price moves much more than the bitcoin count.

The dollar value swung between about $180 and $355 a month. The bitcoin count moved far less. In June 2026, the weakest month for price, the machine mined about 10% more bitcoin than in October 2025, the month of the all-time high. Less efficient machines had switched off, so each remaining terahash earned a larger share.

Difficulty slowly lowers the bitcoin per month

The bitcoin count is not fixed either. As more hashrate joins the network, difficulty rises and each terahash earns less. From October 2024 to October 2026 the same S21 went from about 0.0042 to 0.0028 BTC a month, about a third less, with no halving in between.

The pause in 2026 was short. Difficulty rose about 5.5% in September and about 11% in October. After the adjustment of 29 October 2026 (+5.54%) it stood at 148.36T (mempool.space), close to the record of 155.97T set in October 2025.

Plan for the bitcoin a machine mines to fall slowly over time, and to halve at the next halving. Do not plan on a fixed BTC count.

Efficiency decides who keeps running

At the same hashprice, every machine earns the same per terahash. What differs is the power each terahash needs, measured in joules per terahash (J/TH). At today’s hashprice, machines at 20 to 25 J/TH are being switched off. An S21-class machine at 17.5 J/TH has more room before its power cost catches up with its income (OneMiners).

That is also why output in bitcoin rose in June: when the least efficient machines stop, the ones still running get a bigger share. See joules per terahash explained to compare models.

Pay power from cash, and the bitcoin count keeps growing

There are two ways to pay the power bill. You can sell part of each month’s bitcoin to pay the host, or you can pay from cash and keep every coin. In a bear market the first way sells the most bitcoin when each coin buys the fewest dollars. Selling bitcoin to pay the power bill works through that cost.

Paying from cash keeps the bitcoin count growing every month, whatever the price. In effect you are buying bitcoin at your cost of power: see why keeping mined bitcoin is buying bitcoin. You still choose when to sell. This article does not tell you when that should be.

It has a cost. You need cash for power month after month while the coins sit, and bitcoin you keep can fall further. Large public miners did not all hold through 2026: MARA sold about 23,093 BTC in the first half of the year.

To compare both ways on real past months, use the sell-or-keep calculator.

Paying power upfront at Segments

If you plan to pay power from cash, you can pay Segments hosting 12 or 24 months upfront: 5% off for 12 months, 8% off for 24 months. The rate stays fixed for the term. You are billed on the energy actually used, drawn from the prepaid balance, and unused credit is refunded when you leave. See hosting paid upfront.

Virtual assets may lose their value in full or in part and are subject to extreme volatility. This article is education, not investment advice. Segments sells bitcoin mining hosting.