Bitcoin’s recovery from $59,000 to $84,000 has improved mining economics, but older equipment remains under pressure.
Transaction fees averaged just 0.64% of Bitcoin miner revenue in the last 30 days, according to analyst Axel Adler Jr.
And with BTC oscillating between $83,000 and $84,000, miners’ finances depend mostly on the asset’s price and the electricity their machines burn, since fees add almost nothing.
Almost All Miner Revenue Still Comes From Newly Issued Coins
In dollar terms, fees brought in an average of 64 cents out of every $100 of daily miner revenue, and newly issued BTC supplied the rest. A week earlier, the 30-day average was 0.65, a change Adler described as small, though the indicator has stayed below 1% since mid-August 2025.
Bitcoin has climbed from $59,000 to $84,000, and the analyst credits that rise for most of the improvement in miners’ conditions. The fee share is the figure to watch: a sustained return above 1% would show fees contributing more to revenue and point to greater network activity.
At an electricity price of $0.05 per kilowatt-hour, the report compared two Bitmain machines. Mining one BTC with an Antminer S19 costs $86,700 in electricity alone, more than the asset is worth even after the price recovery. An S21 needs about $44,300 of power per BTC, leaving more room for equipment, maintenance and other expenses.
Fees at this level do not confirm that miners are shutting down machines or selling reserves, Adler added, since each operator’s position depends on its hardware, power rate and other expenses. The electricity figure also omits equipment purchases and cooling costs, so the full cost of mining a coin is higher.
Bitcoin’s Price Decides How Much Cushion Miners Have
Further price gains would narrow the S19 shortfall and widen the S21 cushion, according to the report, while a decline would cut revenue for both models. CoinGecko data put BTC near $83,000 at the time of writing, up 8% across the last 30 days. However, the seven-day change is more than a 3% decline, and the price is sitting 25% lower than a year ago and nearly 34% below its all-time high of over $126,000.
You may also like:
As CryptoPotato reported earlier today, the September Consumer Price Index report, a gauge of inflation, is due Wednesday, October 14, with producer prices and retail sales following on Thursday. A hotter-than-expected reading could add pressure on BTC, which has not regained most of the losses from last Thursday’s crash.
Miners have also been looking beyond Bitcoin for income. MARA posted a $611.3 million net loss for the second quarter in August, and several public miners sold more than 32,000 BTC in the first quarter of 2026 and put the proceeds into AI contracts worth an estimated $70 billion industry-wide.