Mine vs Buy Bitcoin in 2026
Hashprice is at all-time lows. Here's what could happen next
This letter is now $21/month.
It will remain free for all active Simple Mining clients.
If that’s you, email me from the address you use for Substack and I’ll comp your subscription.Going forward, this publication will focus on capital allocation, timing, and risk in Bitcoin mining (and overall investing ideas I have about the sector).
The mission is to build a favorable position for what will be the greatest dual catalyst the market has ever seen:
Bitcoin & AI
So fewer broad educational topics (which will be published for free at Simple Mining Insights), and more direct content related to investing in Bitcoin mining.
2026 is here, and Bitcoin has officially broken a strong trend it has been following since 2014: red candle (down year), following by three green candles (up years)
What does this mean?
Bitcoin is in uncharted territory.
More importantly for readers of this letter, what does this mean for Bitcoin mining?
Most people look at hashprice and see a broken market:
They miss the signal hiding in plain sight.
Hashprice tells you when to enter.
Right now, we sit at levels we haven’t seen since ever.
The question is simple: does this mean mining is dead, or does this mean a unique opportunity is forming?
What separates miners who ROI from miners who bleed capital until they quit?
Timing.
And timing comes down to one relationship: price growth vs difficulty growth.
Let me show you the math:
The Mining Profitability Equation
Before we forecast 2026, we need a shared framework.
Mining profitability splits into two buckets: market conditions and capital conditions.
Market conditions (external, you have no control over these):
Difficulty (how many miners compete for the same pie)
Bitcoin price (what your mined BTC sells for in dollars)
Block subsidy (currently 3.125 BTC per block)
Transaction fees (the wildcard that spikes during network congestion)
These four variables combine into one metric:
Hashprice.
Hashprice tells you expected revenue per unit of hashpower.
It rolls everything together so you can compare apples to apples across time.
Capital conditions (internal, what you have more control over):
Power cost (the single most important variable)
Hashpower (hash output)
Machine efficiency (how well does the machine turn input joules into hash output)
Uptime (percentage of days your machines run)
The formula is simple: Revenue minus Cost equals Profit.
You can see there are still machines with Revenue > Cost at 8 cents per kilowatt hr:
But the timing of your entry changes everything.
Why Hashprice Looks “Bad” (And Why That Might Be Good)
In 2017, miners earned over $3 per TH per day. Today, we hover around $0.03 to $0.04
Does this mean mining is a “bad investment?”
No.
It means the market matured.
Consider the context of 2017:
Bitcoin price rose over 2,000% in one year
Machines produced 10 TH (today’s produce 400 TH)
Block subsidy was 4x larger (12.5 BTC)
Difficulty was a fraction of today’s level
That was the perfect storm.
Massive price appreciation, low competition, high issuance.
Today’s lower hashprice reflects an industrialized market.
More miners. Better machines. Tighter margins.
But here is what matters: hashprice lows creates entry points.
And entry points determine ROI.
The Three Golden Windows
When we study history, three periods stand out where miners crushed it:
