With Bitcoin’s hashrate reaching a record high, miners in the U.S. are dealing with dwindling profits alongside soaring equipment costs attributed to tariffs imposed during Trump’s administration.
The hashrate of Bitcoin (BTC) mining—which quantifies the computational power dedicated to mining and processing transactions on the network—has exceeded 1 Zetahash per second (ZH/s), a staggering leap of 1000 times since January 2016. This significant achievement occurred on April 5, though estimates of peaked ZH/s may vary across different sources due to divergent measuring techniques. Mempool.space reported a peak of 1.025 ZH/s, while BTC Frame noted it to be 1.02 ZH/s on April 4.
While a surging hashrate enhances the network’s resilience against attacks, it poses challenges for BTC miners. As the hashrate increases, the network automatically adjusts its difficulty level to maintain an average block time of about 10 minutes per block. This adjustment occurs roughly every two weeks (or every 2,016 blocks) to ensure new blocks are consistently added.
Given that mining rewards are fixed at 450 BTC per day until the next halving in 2028, the influx of computational power means these rewards will be distributed among an ever-growing number of miners. Consequently, as competition for the same pool of rewards intensifies, each miner’s share diminishes, thus leading to a decrease in hashprice—the revenue a miner earns per unit of hashrate. Indeed, hashprice has experienced a significant decline over the past three months, dropping from about $60 in mid-January to roughly $40 at the current moment, illustrating the profitability strain on miners as the hashrate continues to rise.
As the hashrate increases, miners are under greater pressure to enhance their operational efficiency. “Miners are intensifying their efforts: expanding operations and integrating more efficient machinery,” Blockware Solutions lead analyst Mitchell Askew stated. He also emphasized that miners equipped with less effective machinery might soon find it challenging to stay afloat unless Bitcoin’s price rises soon.
The difficulties faced by Bitcoin miners have been exacerbated by tariffs instituted during Trump’s presidency, which have inflated the costs associated with mining equipment for U.S. firms. While China continues to be the primary source of Bitcoin mining hardware, it is now subject to a 34% retaliatory tariff for its exports to the U.S., further straining the return on investment for American miners.