Bitcoin (BTC) surged past $96,000 on the first day of May, marking the first time BTC had crossed that threshold since its February correction, triggered by President Trump’s tariffs.
Since bottoming at $75,000 in April, bitcoin has rebounded 28%, giving rise to a follow-up boom across the bitcoin mining sector.
TeraWulf (WULF) soared 16.5% on Thursday. Iren Hut 8 Corp. (HUT) gained 9.8%, Riot Platforms (RIOT) added 7.3%, CleanSpark (CLSK) rose 6.1%, and IREN Limited (IREN) climbed 4.3%.
But behind the green candles lies a harsh, cold truth: Bitcoin mining has never been less profitable, even with the crypto flirting with the $100,000 mark.
In fact, for smaller U.S.-based operations, it now costs roughly $137,000 to mine a single BTC, according to recent industry estimates. In Germany, that figure is closer to $200,000.
Even the most efficient industrial-scale miners face costs of around $82,000 per coin, leaving them with razor-thin margins at current prices.
That’s why, despite bitcoin’s strong performance, seven of the eight largest U.S. miners are expected to post Q1 losses, according to a Bloomberg analysis.
The industry’s collective Q1 net income is projected to fall by $1.3 billion year-over-year, swinging from a $1.1 billion profit in Q1 2024 to a $190 million loss this year.
CleanSpark is expected to be the only major miner reporting a profit.
Bitcoin miner woes are evident in the performance of CoinShares’ Valkyrie Bitcoin Mining ETF (WGMI), which tracks a basket of mining stocks. The ETF has become the worst-performing ETF of 2025, down 34.3% year-to-date
A perfect storm: higher costs, stiffer competition, weaker returns
As electricity prices soar and global competition intensifies, miners are struggling to stay afloat.
Russia and China have expanded their mining footprints, eating into U.S. market share and adding to the network’s overall hashrate (the total computing power securing the bitcoin blockchain.)
That’s a major issue. As the hashrate climbs, mining becomes exponentially more energy-intensive and expensive.
JPMorgan noted on Thursday that BTC miners exposed to high-performance computing (HPC) underperformed BTC for the third straight month, as profitability continues to decline.
Electricity bills alone can reach tens of millions of dollars, and with hashrates at all-time highs, miner revenues have dropped to record lows, according to a CoinDesk study.
In light of the falling apart economics of bitcoin mining, some miners are adapting.
Rather than continue to mine BTC, several have begun redirecting their HPC infrastructure toward powering AI data centers, a sector with stronger margins and more consistent demand.
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