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Solo mining became a thing right when ambitious crypto buffs got their hands on custom mining setups. This gave birth to a whole niche of home-based mining farms and solo crypto entrepreneurs.
The buzzkill here is that managing independent mining operations becomes more challenging by the year. The Bitcoin supply cap is tangibly limited, and to stimulate the coin flow and mining competition, halving takes place once in a couple of years, raising the overall difficulty of mining and lowering mining rewards.
This and the ever-competitive state of the crypto market make us question — is solo mining still viable at all?
Key Changes in Bitcoin Mining Since the 2024 Mining
The main reason for asking this question in the first place is the effect of halving. The last halving took place in 2024, and it completely reshaped the Bitcoin mining ecosystem by slashing block rewards and tightening coin supply dynamics. This brought on a slew of ultimate changes.
To recap:
- Halved block rewards
The most immediate change is that miners now earn 50% fewer bitcoins per block compared to what they used to get. This bears a direct impact on miners’ revenue streams and motivates many to re-assess profitability of their operations. - Adjusted mining difficulty: As the network’s total hash rate grows, more blocks must be produced and their mining time must be kept consistent. This is achieved by raising the principal difficulty of cryptographic operations in a block.
- Limited economic viability: Now that the block rewards are about half lower, mining rig owners must mind every article of expense even more carefully. This includes electricity bills, hardware maintenance, and overall efficiency-profitability ratio.
These factors make the space for solo mining Bitcoin stifling and overly challenging unless you re-prioritize and double down on energy management and maximization of profitability on reasonable investment.
This is the first essential change in Bitcoin mining as a whole — in order to stay efficient and up-to-competition, existing mining rigs must run on the latest hardware and software.
Because not everybody can afford that, we get the second big outcome — the hashrate centralization trend. This pushed the popularity of mining pools — collective platforms where enthusiasts can gather and combine the hashrate performance of their ASICs.
But more on that below. Right now, let’s try and clarify this question.
Profitability in 2025: Is Solo Mining Still a Viable Path?
As Bitcoin solo mining can be very individual based on how exactly you approach and manage your venture, there cannot be a definite fit-for-all answer as to the profitability of staying solo. It is important to make an individual analysis here and understand whether the game’s worth the shot exactly for you.
Here are the metrics that will help you ultimately decide.
Estimated Costs vs. Potential Block Rewards
Your crypto mining’s profitability is shaped by the operational expenses your rig generates more than by anything else. This is why you should start with the calculation of your return-on-investment potential.
Important. Make sure to factor in both fixed and variable types of expenses:
- Fixed costs: Upfront investment in an ASIC miner (ASIC hardware, extra fans, energy source), farm setup (racks, housing for a rig), and infrastructure of your rig (connections, interior, etc.).
- Variable costs: Electricity usage, cooling (fans might need to be switched from time to time), maintenance (tech support, troubleshooting, repairs, etc.).
First thing you should do is list all of these and compare them with the profitability of your mining rig. You can approximate the rig profitability by taking its energy consumption specs and maximum hash capacity (hash mined per second), and calculating Watts per Terahash (W/Th) consumed.
To make things simpler, use a specialized solo mining calculator, where you can specify any required specs and even simulate custom mining scenarios to get an approximation that considers all variables.
Electricity Prices and Energy Efficiency
Today’s high-end ASIC miner might consume up to 3.3 kilowatts (kW). Running twenty-four hours a day, this translates to roughly 80 kilowatt-hours (kWh) consumed daily.
Here’s a breakdown for you:
Power consumption | Daily cost | Monthly estimate | Annual estimate | Regional variability |
~3.3 kW (~80 kWh per day) | ~$4 per day per machine (at the energy cost of ~$0.05 per kWh) | ~$120 per machine | ~$1,425 per machine | x2 potential depending on the regional energy prices |
At an electricity rate of about $0.05 per kWh, your Bitcoin solo miner would cost roughly $4 per day per machine. That’s about $120 per month or roughly $1,425 per year for each miner. And in regions with higher electricity rates — say, $0.10 per kWh — these costs could easily double.
Break-even Analysis for Solo Miners
To give you a practical example, we have conducted a break-even analysis based on the hypothetic purchase and usage of Antminer S19 Pro.
- Assumptions:
- ASIC Miner: Antminer S19 Pro
- Hashrate: 110 TH/s
- Power consumption: 3.25 kW
- Cost: $3,000
- Economic factors:
- Electricity cost: $0.03 per kWh (low-cost energy scenario)
- Bitcoin price: $85,000 per BTC
- Network conditions:
- Total network hashrate: 350 EH/s (350 × 10¹⁸ H/s)
- Block reward: 3.125 BTC per block
- Blocks per day: 144
In order to get a break-even, we need to calculate all underlying factors step-by-step.
#1 Calculate miner’s share of the network
- Convert miner’s hashrate: 110 TH/s = 110 × 10¹² H/s
- Miner’s share = (110 × 10¹² H/s) ÷ (350 × 10¹⁸ H/s)
≈ 3.14 × 10⁻⁷
#2 Determine daily mining revenue
- Total daily Bitcoin reward:
144 blocks × 3.125 BTC/block = 450 BTC/day - Daily BTC earned by miner:
450 BTC × 3.14 × 10⁻⁷ ≈ 0.0001413 BTC/day - Daily revenue:
0.0001413 BTC × $85,000 ≈ $12.01 per day
#3 Calculate daily electricity cost
- Daily energy consumption:
3.25 kW × 24 hours = 78 kWh/day - Daily electricity cost:
78 kWh × $0.03/kWh ≈ $2.34 per day
#4 Determine daily profit and break-even time
- Daily net profit:
$12.01 (mining revenue) – $2.34 (electricity cost) ≈ $9.67 per day - Break-even period for hardware:
$3,000 ÷ $9.67 per day ≈ 310 days (about 0.85 years)
Under these optimistic conditions, the daily mining revenue is estimated at around $12.01. After subtracting the electricity cost of $2.34, the net daily profit is approximately $9.67. With a hardware cost of $3,000, the break-even point should be achieved in around 310 days (just under a year).
Hardware Requirements: Can You Compete Without Top-Tier ASICs?
As you can see, today’s solo Bitcoin mining conditions can be quite harsh. You have higher chances to maintain a profitable operation with a high-end ASIC. But things aren’t so simple and even a top-tier ASIC rig cannot guarantee a maximized costs-to-profits ratio.
Hashrate Centralization
That is mostly due to the overwhelming centralization of hashrate among a few dominant crypto market players. This phenomenon makes solo mining riskier — your chance to win a block becomes highly stochastic compared to pooled resources.
This reduces the probability for an individual solo miner Bitcoin to successfully mine a block, as rewards are distributed based on hashrate share. For solo miners, winning a block reward becomes largely a game of chance. Even if your equipment is top-tier, a few days without a reward can severely impact cash flow and ROI.
Alternative Strategies for Individual Miners
If you do run (or expect to run) into that sort of a situation, your best bet is to consider alternative ways to maximize your mining profits. A lot depends on hashrate capacity, but truly successful mining operations are consistent. You can achieve that consistency by exploring the following options.
Joining Mining Pools With Low Fees
Transitioning from pure solo mining to joining a Bitcoin solo mining pool can provide more consistent returns while still maintaining some degree of independence. You should research and pick the best bitcoin solo mining pool options based on fees and reward frequency. There are increasingly loyal platforms with minimum fees appearing each day.
Using Platforms Like EZ Blockchain to Optimize Performance
A specialized, all-in-one, innovative platform like EZ Blockchain can give you a bunch of tools to optimize mining operations and boost a mining rig’s performance. Namely, you can maximize the energy-efficiency and minimize maintenance expenses with:
- A convenient dashboard with real-time monitoring statistics, metrics, and tweaking features
- Analytics and data processing that helps get performance insights, predict profits, and prevent failures
- Sensitive resource management with KPI and power monitoring, in-app bill payments, and profit calculation
Exploring Merge Mining and Altcoins
Last but certainly not least, there are ways you can diversify how you solo mine Bitcoin. First off, you can mine two or more blockchain networks simultaneously by merging your mining operations. A novel technique, merged mining allows you to profit from an auxiliary chain that you can dual-mine as a secondary network without an increased performance burden.
As yet another alternative option, you can take your mining beyond Bitcoin and explore altcoins. These include any cryptos other than Bitcoin. Setting sights on other, both established and promising networks, such as Solana, Cardano, or Polka Dot, each bearing the potential to bring increased profits, especially during bull markets.
Final Verdict: Is Solo Mining Worth It — or Is It a Thing of the Past?
Solo mining definitely becomes substantially harder to take on single-handedly, what with all the halving events, stable competition, and growing costs of energy. To answer the ultimate question — yes, solo mining can be quite profitable in 2025 if you know your market, leverage insights, and calculate things beforehand.
At the very least, you can see that from our break-even analysis. If you need a more personalized estimation or wish to consult the next step in your crypto mining journey, you can turn to specialists at EZ Blockchain for individual guidance and services.
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