Market Downturn and Miner Profitability
After a relatively stable third quarter, with hashprice averaging around $55 per PH/s, November saw a sharp decline. Hashprice fell to $35 per PH/s as Bitcoin corrected. At these levels, profitability stress is no longer theoretical—it has become systemic, affecting miners across the board.
Structural Pressure on Miners
The MinerMag’s Q3-2025 report highlights the severity of the situation. Median total hashcost for major public miners is roughly $44 per PH/s, covering cash-based fleet operating expenses, corporate overhead, and financing. Even miners with efficient machines and competitive power rates are now navigating near break-even economics. By allocating corporate and financial expenses proportionally to mining revenue, the report shows that diversified business models are still vulnerable to structural cost pressures.
Cost-per-hash has become a more revealing metric than cost-per-Bitcoin. With the network hashrate around 1.1 ZH/s, normalizing for difficulty swings exposes the growing gap between the median miner and the least efficient units. New-generation machines now face payback periods exceeding 1,000 days, well past the roughly 850-day countdown to the next Bitcoin halving.
CleanSpark provides a real-world example: the company recently fully repaid its Coinbase bitcoin-backed credit line shortly after raising over $1 billion in convertible notes. That move underscores how miners are prioritizing de-leveraging and liquidity in response to collapsing hash price and shrinking margins.
Today $CLSK reported transformative full fiscal year 2025 financial results (ended 9/30/25), setting the stage for our AI expansion.
Revenue: $766.3 million (102% growth YoY)
Net Income: $364.5 million
Total Assets: $3.2 billion
Power Under Contract: 1.31 GW (as of 10/31/25)… pic.twitter.com/eWue73hg8Y— CleanSpark Inc. (@CleanSpark_Inc) November 25, 2025
Shifting Capital and Future Outlook
Q3-2025 funding data reinforces the strain. Public miners raised approximately $3.5 billion in debt, mainly via near-zero coupon convertibles, alongside $1.4 billion in equity financing. As Q4-2025 unfolds, capital is increasingly coming through higher-cost senior secured notes at around 7%. Companies like Cypher and Terawulf alone are raising close to $5 billion, putting Q4-2025 on track to become the largest debt-raising quarter in Bitcoin mining history.
The first nuclear-powered Bitcoin mining facility in Pennsylvania, operated by @TeraWulfInc 👀🚀🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/fEei77Y2fZ
— JAN3 (@JAN3com) September 19, 2024
This environment raises critical questions about the sector’s ability to scale alternative revenue streams, such as high-performance computing and AI, fast enough to offset declining hash price and rising debt. For now, the evidence points to a sorting phase in the industry, where efficiency, liquidity management, and strategic positioning will determine which miners endure and which exit the market.