Bitcoin Miners Under Pressure as Hashprice Slides Below $40/PH/s

Miners are in a tough spot. As of April 2025, hashprice—the revenue miners earn per unit of computing power—has dropped below $40 per petahash per second (PH/s).

That’s the lowest since September 2024 and close to breakeven for many. The decline is due to rising mining difficulty, softer transaction fees and a broader market cool off.

Mining difficulty went up 6.81% this month while transaction fees fell to 1.2% of total block rewards. For miners that means more work for less reward—tightening an already thin margin.

Tariffs Hit Miners Where It Hurts

To make matters worse, U.S. trade policy is now hitting miners where it hurts: their supply chains. The Biden administration’s 104% tariffs on Chinese imports and additional duties on equipment from Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam are disrupting the flow of mining rigs into North America.

To avoid the tariffs some are chartering private cargo planes—spending up to $3.5 million per flight—to rush shipments before the 90 day grace period. While this is a short term solution the long term uncertainty around import costs and regulation is causing a lot of stress.

How Miners Are Adapting

Publicly traded miners like Bitfarms and Hut 8 are trying to get ahead of the curve. Bitfarms has increased its realized hashrate by 16% while Hut 8 has posted an 80% gain as it brings new facilities online. But even with those gains many are struggling.

42% of the BTC mined in March was sold immediately, that’s how tight cash flow is for even large scale miners. The sector’s total market cap is below $20 billion, that’s how much investor caution and reduced expectations have fallen.

What’s Next?

The next few months will be critical. With reduced transaction fee revenue, rising energy costs and trade barriers increasing miners are focused on efficiency and scale. Those that can’t optimize fast enough may not survive this cycle.

But some in the space think the shakeout will strengthen the network in the long run. Leaner more agile operations will emerge stronger—especially if Bitcoin’s price recovers and regulation clarifies.

For now though miners are in survival mode.