Breaking through the 87,000 cost threshold, BTC miners collectively "surrender": where is the industry bottom?

February 12, 2026, marks the most severe moment for Bitcoin mining since the “Deep Bear” market of 2022.

According to Gate spot trading data, today BTC/USDT briefly touched the $68,000 threshold amid volatility, with the current mainstream quote hovering around $67,800. This figure has fallen more than 50% from the all-time high of $126,000 set in October 2025.

However, an even more staggering number lies behind the hash rate. The “hard costs” of mining production are tearing apart a huge profit gap with the market fair value.

Mining a single BTC now results in a $19,000 loss: the entire industry enters a “cost inversion” zone

CryptoQuant’s data provides a quantitative description of this crisis: the current fully amortized cost to produce one Bitcoin across the entire network is approximately $87,000.

This means that, based on Gate’s spot price of $67,800 on February 12, each new Bitcoin mined from the grid results in a net loss of about $19,200, even without considering machine depreciation and labor costs. The loss is primarily from electricity, mining hardware procurement, and site expenses, with the net loss per coin being roughly 28% to 45% higher than the current market price (depending on the efficiency of different models).

This “production at a loss” phenomenon is known in the industry as “underwater operation.” The key industry indicator, the “Miner Profitability Sustainability Index,” has plummeted to 21 points. The meaning is clear: aside from top-tier players with access to extremely low spot electricity prices (below $0.05 per kWh) and a fleet of the latest generation machines (with efficiency ratios below 20 J/TH), over 80% of miners are now operating at zero marginal profit.

Hash price drops to five-year lows, US-listed mining companies face a “Davis Double Kill”

The pain among miners is reflected in their core revenue metric—the hash price.

Luxor data shows that the hash price, which measures expected revenue per unit of hash power, has fallen to a historic low of $35/PH. This level is even lower than the near five-year low during the 2022 FTX collapse.

The collapse in revenue has quickly triggered a sell-off in capital markets. Bitcoin mining giants listed on Nasdaq, such as Mara and Riot, have seen their stock prices drop more than 20% this week. Even companies attempting to hedge risks through coin accumulation strategies, like CleanSpark, reported a net loss of nearly $380 million in their latest earnings, with their CEO admitting, “At the current hash price, large-scale expansion of mining capacity no longer makes business sense.”

To maintain liquidity on their balance sheets, the once steadfast “HODL” belief is crumbling. Cango sold 4,451 BTC in early February to raise $305 million to repay loans; Mara transferred over 2,000 BTC as collateral to market makers like FalconX and Wintermute. Miners are shifting from “hoarders” to “sellers,” further fueling panic in the secondary market.

Network hash rate sharply discounted: 11% difficulty adjustment can’t save “legacy models”

On February 9, the Bitcoin network experienced its largest difficulty adjustment since China’s mining ban in 2021—an approximately 11% reduction in total network mining difficulty.

From a textbook perspective, difficulty adjustment aims to reduce miners’ competition pressure and give offline hash power a chance to restart. But this time, the market mechanism failed.

Due to the deep and prolonged decline in Bitcoin’s price, the 11% difficulty reduction cannot compensate for the 45% price gap. For companies with electricity costs above $0.06 per kWh or still using older models like S19 series, shutting down remains the most rational choice. Coupled with the industrial power curtailments caused by the severe winter storm in Texas, many miners shut down and did not reconnect after the difficulty adjustment.

From “Silicon Shovels” to “AI Data Centers”: Leading miners’ mass exodus

Even more pessimistic than shutdowns is the strategic shift among top industry players.

Facing an uncertain “2026 mining winter,” publicly listed companies that once focused primarily on Bitcoin mining are hurriedly shedding their “miner” labels.

Bitfarms recently announced a rebranding to Keel Infrastructure, explicitly stating, “We are no longer a Bitcoin company.” Their business focus has shifted entirely to North American AI/HPC (High-Performance Computing) data center development. Similarly, IREN, which signed a $9.7 billion AI cloud service agreement with Microsoft, is seeing its AI-related revenue grow much faster than its mining operations. In IREN’s latest earnings call, analysts did not ask a single question about Bitcoin mining.

This phenomenon signals one of the most dangerous signs of this cycle: at a time when the industry desperately needs builders to maintain network security, the most capital-strong and savvy top players are leasing out the electricity and racks originally used for Bitcoin hash power at high prices to generative AI companies. While this alleviates individual miners’ bankruptcy risks, it undermines the long-term growth of Bitcoin’s decentralized hash rate, effectively pulling the rug from under its security foundation.

Summary

Back at Gate’s trading interface, market sentiment is seeking a new balance amid “extreme fear.”

As of February 12, according to Alternative data, the Fear and Greed Index remains at 11, still in the “extreme fear” zone. Although Bitcoin has shown brief resilience in the $65,000 to $68,000 range, and ETF fund outflows have slowed marginally, the structural selling pressure caused by miner cost inversion remains a Damocles sword hanging over the bulls.

For ordinary investors, the miners’ capitulation phase often coincides with extreme oversold conditions. On Gate’s spot trading platform, compared to last year’s frenzy above $100,000, the current BTC around $68,000 presents a more favorable risk-reward profile. But the reality is: only when Bitcoin’s price reclaims the $87,000 production cost line or the entire network completes a thorough cleanup of old mining hardware can miners’ balance sheets truly recover.

Until then, “mountains of pressure” is no longer just a metaphor but a real cash drain behind every kilowatt-hour and every PH/s of hash power.