The cost of mining a single Bitcoin in the United States has risen to $111,072, according to new 2025 crypto mining data by CompareForexBrokers. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median full-time wage is $48,060. It now costs more than two years of income for the average American worker to mine just one coin.
This reflects a wider shift in Bitcoin’s mining economy. Once open to hobbyists, mining has become a large-scale industrial activity, driven by access to cheap electricity and high-efficiency infrastructure.
Rising hashrate and post-halving economics
The increase in mining costs is tied directly to the April 2024 halving, which reduced block rewards from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. Miner revenue was halved, but activity intensified. By July 2025, the global Bitcoin network hashrate had reached 894.5 exahashes per second, up from 505 EH/s in early 2024.
That rise in network competition, combined with lower rewards, has sharply increased the energy burden per coin. The energy required to mine one Bitcoin has grown from 104,741 kilowatt-hours in March 2024 to 854,400 kilowatt-hours in July 2025. This is based on consistent hardware efficiency assumptions of 28 joules per terahash, adjusted for cooling and infrastructure losses.
Energy use and cost per coin
Producing 450 new Bitcoins each day now requires 384.48 gigawatt-hours of electricity globally. Dividing this by the number of coins produced, the per-coin energy requirement is exactly 854,400 kilowatt-hours.
At the USA national average electricity rate of $0.13 per kilowatt-hour, this equates to an energy cost of $111,072 per Bitcoin, using grid electricity alone. This excludes all hardware, staffing, and infrastructure costs.
The effect of cheaper energy access
While this figure reflects the national average, large-scale operators with access to low-cost electricity achieve much better margins. At $0.06 per kilowatt-hour, the cost per coin drops to $51,264. At $0.04, it falls to $34,176.
These rates are only available to firms with direct access to surplus hydropower, long-term industrial contracts, or their own generation assets. Operators in Texas, Georgia, and North Dakota often fall into this category. With a market price of $118,678 per coin, miners at the lowest energy cost see margins of more than 70%. This level of profitability is not available to retail or grid-reliant miners, who are increasingly being pushed out of the market.
Structural change in the mining industry
The rising energy cost per Bitcoin is reshaping the mining landscape. Mining a single coin now uses more electricity than 81 US homes consume in an entire year. In the United States alone, mining draws 145.72 gigawatt-hours per day, or 53,200 gigawatt-hours annually.
With electricity forming the majority of operational costs, competitiveness now depends on location and scale. Smaller operators cannot match the energy prices secured by industrial facilities with behind-the-meter access. As these participants exit, mining is becoming more centralised and less transparent, concentrated among firms with capital and favourable energy terms.
Energy has replaced hardware as the core factor
In 2025, mining one Bitcoin in the United States costs more than what most Americans earn in a year. It is no longer a side activity or passive income opportunity. It is a capital-intensive operation where energy pricing defines success or failure.
The barriers to entry are rising. Profitability now depends not on hardware efficiency alone, but on energy strategy. The shift toward large-scale, energy-optimised mining has created a new phase for Bitcoin, one shaped less by decentralisation and more by industrial economics.
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