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235 EH/s of Bitcoin mining capacity is idle, complicating recovery signals
Luxor estimates the idle power includes uneconomic machines and units deliberately curtailed during Texas’s summer window, even as August hashprice and Bitcoin prices rose about 24%.
Bitcoin mining services firm Luxor estimates that about 235 exahashes per second, or EH/s, of specialized Bitcoin mining capacity is sitting idle, with the equipment offline for different reasons that make any rebound signal harder to interpret. In its Sept. 8 report, Luxor cited categories including machines that are uneconomic, deliberately curtailed, in transit, or under maintenance, and said the mix of causes can cloud whether miners are recovering from financial distress.
Luxor linked the decision-making to changes in mining economics over the summer. It noted that an August Bitcoin rally increased the revenue available from mining, even as Texas’s summer curtailment window for avoiding peak-related transmission charges runs through September, meaning some operators could remain offline or restart based on those shifting incentives.
Using its August lookback data, Luxor said dollar-denominated hashprice rose 24.4% during August, from $31.63 to $39.33 per petahash per second per day. Over the same period, Bitcoin’s price rose 24.5%, from $62,889 to $78,312 in Luxor’s data, improving the dollar value of rewards that miners compete to earn.
Luxor added that the revenue recovery that encourages restarts may be muted if other operators make similar decisions, increasing competition among those that remain online. It estimated that one fleet tier consuming 25 to 38 joules per terahash averaged about $45 per megawatt-hour in August, below a network-average estimated electricity cost of $48, and reported blocks averaged 9 minutes and 34 seconds in August while the Sept. 5 difficulty adjustment increased 1.31%.
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