Mining economics tighten as record hashrate meets falling Bitcoin price: Report

Bitcoin miners are getting absolutely squeezed right now — network hashrate just hit a record 1.16 ZH/s in October while BTC price dropped toward $81k entering November. This brutal combo pushed hashprice below $35/PH/s, dipping under the $45/PH/s median that public miners reported. Translation: margins are getting vaporized, with some ops approaching straight-up breakeven territory.

Payback periods for mining rigs have stretched beyond 1,200 days (yes, you read that right), while financing costs keep climbing across the board. This follows a relatively chill Q3 where hashprice averaged around $55/PH/s thanks to BTC trading near $110k. Now? Rising network competition + BTC price drop = mining profitability at its weakest levels on record.

The financial squeeze has triggered a surge in miner borrowing, starting with a wave of near-zero-coupon convertible bonds last quarter. And while miners are accelerating their pivot into AI and high-power computing (HPC), revenue from these services is still too small to meaningfully offset the brutal drop in Bitcoin mining income.

Here's the plot twist: despite the sector's tightening economics, the top ten publicly traded miners all pumped over the past 24 hours. CleanSpark, Cipher Mining, and IREN posted double-digit gains on Monday after JPMorgan dropped a research note raising price targets for these three, pointing to a surge in long-term HPC and cloud deals across the sector.

JPMorgan noted that Cipher's share price had fallen roughly 45% from its peak, creating a juicy entry point, and said the company was 'well-positioned' to sign additional HPC tenant deals. In November, IREN locked in a five-year, $9.7 billion GPU cloud services deal with Microsoft, giving the tech giant access to Nvidia GB300 GPUs hosted in IREN's data centers.

The bank trimmed its estimates for Marathon Digital and Riot, arguing that lower Bitcoin prices and larger share counts are weighing on these miners' sizable coin inventories. The miner stock surge also coincided with a mild BTC rebound — up around 2% over 24 hours to trade near $89k at writing time.